Consuelo's Travels
by UnagiKeki
Summary: -Yo me creo; I still believe-  Death releases a fiery Latina schoolgirl into the Naruto world- but where do you go, and how do you live in a place that you weren't meant to belong? Chap 8- it's time to destroy everything Kon is and knows...again. YAY.
1. Up

**AN: This is a vomit story. It was vomitted in stressful evenings, while I worried about things that I can't hope to control. I wrote it for fun- because everywhere else, I've been drawing blanks. I will be updating my other works soon- but this story has been so much fun to write that I figured maybe I've got a gem. **

**... Plus, I've always wanted to approach this overdone genre; some authors can pull it off amazingly well. We shall see if I am one of them... ^_^**

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* * *

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Para mis hijos, y el marido que he amado mas que la vida:

_This story is one I wrote without even trying- and that's the message I want to leave my children and my husband with: every good thing in my life was given to me as a precious gift. Cherish the people that you are blessed enough to share time with. If love had been enough to keep me with you, I would have never left your sides. I didn't want to. _

_But life has plans of it's own, and we have to trust that those work out for the best._

_Con todo mi amor,_

_-Su mama y su esposa_

_

* * *

_

I died on August 6th. This is the last date I remember, because after that day time lost all of it's importance.

Certainly there are months and days, years in this world; but where I came from, the passages of hours were somehow different. That life seems to stretch further, longer in my mind than these years I have spent as a daughter, a mother, a lover, a Shinobi. Those memories have been slowly superseded by the ones I made here, but I remember the heaviness of those days. I remember standing on the bridge that day, with bastions of salty wind tearing my hair into wild clouds; I remember the smell of boats and dying fish, the unmistakable stink of the sea. I had known the ocean for as long as I had lived, it seemed; there was no unease in my steps, and no fear churning in me as I bent my head over the guardrail and stared into the tea-colored inlet below. Gulls were circling in the air, shrieking melancholy cries. Boats puttered like tottering old men across the water. The man next to me had caught a stingray.

I remember the stingray especially, because- to be perfectly honest- that fish killed me. It was just a little creature, as big and as flat as the massive, chapped hand of the fisherman as he braced himself against a pole, looking down at his catch. Fishing from this bridge was technically against the rules, but that world was a place where hardly anything mattered as long as you didn't hurt anybody- and most of time, nobody did. Amazing, huh? Can you imagine everyone in a general area, the whole country even, having that kind of genial empathy? This man wasn't even hurting the little stingray; he pulled the silver line in quickly, and swung the flat little guy onto the metal-plank deck of the pedestrian causeway.

The stingray fought with it's devolved little wings, flapping weakly as the man (dark hair, graying mustache, battered hat) slid the hook from it's tiny gash of a mouth with an ease that kept me watching, spellbound. Something so small and cute as this was incapable of being fierce- it's stinger wasn't even fully grown yet- but those muddy little eyes shone through with a fighting will. The man's hairy fingers plunged again and again after the fleshy thing's body; but each time he reached the stingray would flop furiously, still beating his almost-transparent wings.

I took off my blue flip-flop and stepped, cautiously, towards the little guy. The fisherman grinned from beneath the shade of his visor, eyes invisible behind sunglasses; I smiled back instinctively, and crouched on my ankles. The little stingray, as I expected, fled the incoming shoe by walloping closer to the gap between where the railing began and the air opened. It would be a long fall for the fishie, I remember thinking. The sun spangling off of it's jelly-like skin, it's heaving little gill sack, absorbed my attention, so much so that I hardly heard the fisherman step hesitantly back.

It's funny, but I remember everything but how I died. I've spent all this time talking about a damn fish, but I only saw a flash of the thing that killed me. There was a car (a self-propelled carriage that we had back in that world, since they don't exist here), it's gaping headlights suddenly feet from me, like a monster that spontaneously teleported before me; it's lights were on, even though it was broad day. I heard the screaming of rubber meeting asphalt, of brakes screeching and the gulls soaring away in fear. The fisherman's hand snatched at my elbow like a clamp, a strong, grandfather's hand. I remember pulling my arms up in front of my face (just like the ninjas on TV did) and wondering, with a clarity that seems silly now, _what is my mom going to think? _And then the faux-chrome indented itself in my gut; that car hit me and kept moving, yanking me out of the old man's grip and into the shocking coldness of the bottomless air. Shards of metal and the shattered chains of the guardrail, broken glass from the windows of the car; a funnel of debris as if I were looking up the center of a tornado, a revving red car hovering in the sky with me, weightless. The stingray wavering against the sky, taking me home with him.

It was August 6th, the day I died; the day they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima nearly fifty years before. My mother and I were on a trip to the beach, to celebrate the beginning of my junior year of high school, and now she was all alone.


	2. Down

_I loved to write, in that world; it was just the way that I could express my utmost feelings, as natural as music or painting to some geniuses and prodigies. I wasn't one of those, of course- but I was the best writer in the school. I received a perfect score on the state-wide writing test; my homeroom teacher had come running down the hall waving the scorecard. I was going to college, everyone knew. I was a bright, young girl with a whole future ahead of me. _

_But I would rather be writing a letter to the most precious people I have even known, in death, than to have gotten every scholarship or award. Dying was the best thing I ever did, because it brought me to you. _

* * *

It was hard to know if anything was real, at this point. Considering that my last memories were of being broad-sided by a vehicle and being dragged to my death over the side of a bridge, it wasn't even entirely clear if this heavy body I could feel myself stirring within, strangely, was a dream or not.

Things ran through my mind that made, like the fact that a reality still stood around me, absolutely no sense; somehow I was sitting up in the scrubby grass.

Late-afternoon sunlight, slanting between low, sandstone buildings; long shadows and edges of life cavorting in the brightness between them. Everything cloudy at first, but coming clearer; and finally I saw long-haired girls in tunics. Their foreheads sparkled in the red sun, as brightly as their eyes. They were moving slowly, so slowly in the thick air- I could practically taste the dust and locust-stink. It was the unmistakable dryness of summer; humidity cleaving to my skin, to the stripes of my tanktop.

My legs were there, long and pale as ever; the webbed fabric of a bathing suit clinging to my stomach. My toes ached from clutching the thongs of a blue sandal, only one of which was still with me. My hands, alien, lifted before me: the same fingers that pecked so loudly on keyboards as to drive people at the library to distraction; the same ring that I wore on the wrong finger; chewed fingernails.

"…What the _hell_ is wrong with you?"

I turned to face him without knowing; as much of a writer as I used to be, I can't explain the speed at which all of these things were happening, or how I had come to be seated on the dusty ground before a young boy who assessed me with cool eyes that knew more than I could ever hope to.

He made a face after a few moments, gripped the rope tighter. Green plastic goggles, the kind you bought at the Dollar Tree to shut your kid up, googled at the world from his forehead, like misplaced eyes. His orange pants, just at my face level, are what I remember most; he was sitting sideways on a wooden swing that he was too tall for, but his stance said that he'd owned this spot for some time. Everything about him was bright: his blue eyes, his neon jacket sleeves, the shock of blonde hair topping the whole vision.

And then I was up, screaming.

"_Madre a dios! CHINGAAAAAA! QUUUUEEEEE!"_

Palms toward the warm sky, I shouted to see if I could; I waved my arms and leapt up and down, announcing my arrival- and then I swooped down in a well-practiced embrace upon the horrified-looking boy; tangled in the swing he could not escape, but instead his panic and my weight sent us tumbling onto the ground; the old rope sawed at my face, Naruto was fighting like a cat trying to escape a bath, and I didn't care. I couldn't. I was laughing and weeping at the same time, trying to curb the desperate keening sounds as I realized that the girls at the end of the road had stopped and were staring.

Coughing on dust, Naruto squirmed beneath me for his life. Never before had I heard such a litany of swear words, and all directed towards me. He only stopped when I murmured his name once, twice, waiting to see if he would respond.

"Naruto, Naruto, _pobre _kitsune _hijo-_"

"Do I _know_ you, you psycho-bitch!" Spattering. "Get the _hell_ off of me!"

All I could do was stare into his face, like a hypnotized drug-addict. Then, with what must have seemed like an insane person's passion to poor Naruto, I yanked at my unfettered hair. Full shocks, thick and wiry, seeming to hang stiffly of their own accord.

"OH MY _**GOD**_, I HAVE SAKURA HAIR!" I shouted. My brain would have been calmer if it had exploded. For Naruto's part, as I thought secret things to myself and devoured what I could of the city around me with my eyes, he began to calmly back away without taking his eyes off of my form.

I was a tall, skinny brunette with one shoe, staring up at the four, massive stone heads that had kept guard over my favorite dreams. I was standing in the Konoha sunset- and best of all, I had the hair.

"… Oh, _madre a dios-_"

The expression Naruto wore has no name. "Uh, yeah…" he said slowly. "Um, hi. I'm Naruto. Are you… a friend of Sakura-chan's? Did she tell you to come attack me?"

"No," I said. "No. No. Oh, Jesus. Have you stolen the scroll yet!"

"H-how did you know about that!" he blurted, before clapping a hand over his mouth. "I just decided- _GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, YOU PSYCHO-BITCH_! WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD-"

"Naruto, Naruto!" came my peals, which once more served to quiet him (most likely out of fear). As he lifted them from their pensive grip on his yellow locks, I snatched at his open palms. I had to touch him again, to hold his wrists and see, feel. Besides seeming nauseous at what surely must have been my hungry gaze, a resolve had set into those deep, sapphire eyes that I recognized: the mindset of a ninja plotting an escape, a counterattack when surprised. His mouth hardened, whiskers flexing; my heart turned a flip.

"Naruto Uzumaki. Uzumaki Naruto. I'm not reading your mind. I can't do that- yet. I'm, uh- a travelling gypsy."

"What the hell's a gypsy?"

"Ah- a fortune teller! I can tell your fortune, if you, um, want."

"You attack me and then expect me to pay you to guess from the horoscope? Screw you, Psycho-Bitch-"

"No, no! I can tell your future for you- even when Sakura will fall for you!" The words leapt out before I could stop them; I would have lied about anything, said anything at this moment. Nothing was yet real, but with those words the gravity of my presence, unbelievable as it was, finally hit me.

"Woah, really?" he rebounded. Typical Naruto, distracted by most anything. "How much?"

My thoughts were whirling like gears. We had to get out of the street, out from under the sun before I uttered the horrible thought that had just washed over my mind.

I was not supposed to be here- and god knew what kind of damage I could do, trying to get to know these names I'd known only as heroes from a manga.

Weighing the risks was impossible, given the fact that I was standing right in front of Uzumaki Naruto himself; I was, unbelievably, unspeakably in his world, and I made the decision I hadn't had the chance to when I had gone tumbling from the bridge: I was going to walk with him, because I had died, no matter how long this dream lasted- which couldn't be long, of course. People didn't just appear in animated story books, for obvious, universal reasons:

What would happen to the plot, and the fates of every character therein, if a reader appeared in their midst?

* * *

As we walked I made two decisions, soaked in the evanescence of this twist of fate. During my stay in the Naruto world, however long, I would reveal nothing of my knowledge of this place- except to the one man I knew I could trust. I had Naruto take me to his lair, and as we scuffed our dirty feet along the unpaved paths by the fast-running river that cut Konohagakure in half, we came to an understanding. I was also going to string Naruto along using my 'gypsy' lie; who knew how long I would have to lie, anyway?

"So what else happens to me? Does Sakura fall for me soon? OH- when do I become Hokage? Next year? How far can you see, anyway-"

"Naruto, listen up." I scolded in a librarian voice. "I can only tell you things on two conditions, and if you ever break them, I'll…"

"… You'll what?"

"… I'll put a voodoo curse on you so that all of your _pinto_ falls off and that you never become a great Ninja! I'm _aztecana_, fool! Don't mess with me!"

His collective gulp told me that he was hooked, as surely as that little stingray. "Okay, okay, geez! Just don't screw up my life. I think I might need that- uh, what did you say?"

"Uh, nevermind… I promise I won't, but only if you do two things for me."

"Sure, what?" he drawled, crossing arms over his orange chest. He was so much taller than I had thought, an overgrown weed of thirteen years. I couldn't stop looking into his marine eyes.

"You can _never_ tell anybody about what I do- telling fortunes, that is. I'll only tell about the future when you _really _earn it, and it'll still be my decision, anyway. So don't bug me for a fortune or whatever."

"What!" he groaned. "Do you know how much money you could make, doing that? Peh, stupid... How long are you gonna be around, anyway?"

"That's the second thing. I need a place to live while I'm here. Let me live with you for a while. I'll clean up and try to cook, I guess, if you let me."

"… Are you- _WHAT THE HELL!_ I've only known you for ten minutes, and you expect to come waltzing in and _live with me? _Where the hell do you gypsies come from, anyway? And holy shit, what would my neighbors think if they saw a girl in my room-"

"Please, Naruto- I'll sleep on the floor! I can only cook, uh, lots of stuff!" I didn't mention that what I could cook required the technology of my old life, besides that scrambled eggs and tacos from a box hardly qualified as 'a lot of' anything. Did he eat anything besides ramen, anyway?

He seemed to be contemplating the matter with great ponderousness- so much so that he walked into the door of the Hokage's office. He jumped back with wood splinters in his red cheek, his fists balled as he made sure that no one had seen this. I was too sick to my stomach to even laugh; we had reached the realm of Konoha's great sage Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen. To Naruto he was a guardian grandfather; but I knew his name, parts of his past, his summon, and the way he would die.

That's what I told him when Kotetsu shut the door for our private audience: it was an honor to see the Hokage on such short notice, but in late evening he was usually looking for an excuse to get away from paperwork. The maple doors swung shut with a gust that cooled the sweat clinging to my swimsuit top; I hastily removed my one shoe and, on all but instinct, dropped into the best impersonation I could of a Japanese honorary bow.

I heard him rise, the surprised sound he made to see me face-down. "I'm not so stuffy as to demand such gestures, my dear! How can I help you this evening?"

It was the deepest breath I had ever taken; if I was alive, after all. Things were playing at the speed of a nightmare, and I had no choice but to dance along. I knew the way that this world operated, and how brutal it could be to someone who didn't respect it.

"Hokage-sama…" I breathed, hardly believing that I could be speaking, let alone to the idol of Konohagakure himself, it's most powerful protectorate. I couldn't believe how approachable he looked.

"Hokage-sama, I am not supposed to be here…and yet I am."

* * *

I couldn't tell him that I had died; I couldn't tell him that I had left a mother, a puppy dog, schoolfriends behind in an impossible time. Not in so many words. I poured out what I scarcely believed myself: that I had passed through one life and appeared here, for whatever quirk of space or fate. But what else could I say? If he slew me as a traitor or a spy, with my head bent to his varnished floor, did I care what would happen? I certainly didn't fear it, anymore; all the fear had been leeched out of my bones. I was beyond feeling.

… Or at least, I thought. Until he said, "Who'd you kill in a past life, to end up a Shinobi?"

His chuckles rent the stale office. I'm sure the face I wore, of unabashed shock, would have been enough to convince anyone of the honesty of my claim. Somewhere inside I was out of place, and my best guess is that with the wisdom of a man who has surely lived several lives of his own, the Sandaime Hokage had seen enough strange things in his time on the planet that he lent some credence to my outrageous claim. Whatever. At least I didn't die immediately (god knows where I would have gone, then).

But I had to ask. "You… believe me, Hokage-sama?"

"Goodness, you're so formal… I like a good 'Sarutobi-sensei', since you all insist on such formalities. Been so long since I've heard it, I've almost forgotten my own last name!" More laughter, gruff; a smoker's laugh. He sat down, the invisible movements of his stout legs billowing the spotless cloak that tented his short body. He was the most graceful old person I had ever seen; he moved with the youth of my mother, who was certainly twenty years his junior.

"Yes…" he murmured, in a voice that seemed disembodied. "But I sense that's not the only strange thing you'd have me believe, little girl. You came here to speak honestly with me, and I want the whole of what you believe is the truth. If you are a spy, you're a bold one."

You must understand, I was quite beside myself at this point; hopping dimensions will do that to you. I couldn't feel my mouth attached to my brain, and yet it still poured out, seemingly as I watched from the corner: I was a stranger in a strange land, albeit one I had heard of before. In a book, one that I had read for over four years. And then I told him about my mother; my puppy who kept me up all night, my high school, all my hopes for college and becoming a functional member of society. I even told him what I couldn't say at school: that I wanted to be a teacher; that I had wanted to learn how to bring communities together and learned Spanish to accomplish this goal- and how I was, suddenly, here. His eyebrow perked at the mention of another language, but he was quiet throughout my pathetic retelling; halfway through I began to realize how ridiculous I sounded and began to weep, again as if outside of myself. There was salt caked in my eyelashes, from the sea. The last thought I could blubber out was my deepest fear: "I don't know why I'm here! I'm a fucking _time bomb_!"

He ignored my swearing- great man that he was- and I wept like no little girl lost could have. Oh, god- my mother. My dog. My life was back in that old world, that I was suddenly gone from- and here I was in a land of bloodthirsty assassins and supernatural abilities, full of people I had envied and looked up to, sure of their irreality. How could this be happening? Why- why me? And the hope in my heart- the abominable hope that I would wake up (if I could come here, I could certainly leave somehow-)- that I knew would torment me from that moment on. How would I bear it? I couldn't! I couldn't do anything but, but-

"Live," he finished for me. The Hokage had lit his ubiquitous pipe, and the calm, floozy stink of tobacco flooded my nostrils with a rent of home. My father had smoked- his clothes stank of it, even all these years after he had left; it was the smell of my childhood, and it slashed through my soul with such a sorrow that I couldn't even weep. Dumb, silent, I wheezed while the Sandaime placed one hand on my dry, beach-blown hair.

"It appears that you have no choice but to live, little one." His voice was old, dry as brittle reeds. It sounded like the voice of God. "We all have things happen to us beyond explanation- things that make the world seem a very dark place, indeed. You were there- but now you are here. Many more things beyond understanding or comprehension will happen to those who live in this world- you'll see. All of us question our existence from time to time. But the only sure thing is that we continue to live, in spite of what we think will kill us. Stop crying. You will only cry in your heart from now on, because tears are weakness, here."

I wiped my face, as if tugged into motion by a puppet master; I couldn't stop gasping, even as I stared into the old man's kind face through my pink, aching eyes. I will never forget the look I saw beneath the brim of that basket hat; I can't even ask him questions anymore, because he is long dead. But I can honor his memory- and this is the one that gave me the courage to serve him, even after losing everything I knew.

He smiled, driftwood face older than the stone one outside that watched over even when my children were born. "Stop crying, little girl," he repeated, "and tell me your name."

* * *

He sent me out a few minutes later, after telling me things that made my existence sink, like concrete, into my jumbled consciousness. He'd have to keep an eye on me- just to be sure, you understand, even Hokages could have bad judgement calls-, and that living with Naruto was a pleasant idea. There wasn't a down-on-my-luck-charity-fund (which I told him we didn't have in my 'America' either, to his amusement), so finding someone to take me in until I could support myself was inevitable. I had two options: picking up full-time work until I could afford to live on my own, or swearing my life and blood into the Shinobi profession for room and board, albeit abysmal pay and no assurances.

You can pretty much guess which one I chose.

Sure of my intent, Sarutobi related that the recent Genin class had graduated only today- and that it was full of bright, young hopes for the village's future. He didn't say it to my face, but his expression told me that I had little hope of ever reaching their level of expertise; there was no guarantee that I would even become a Genin, given that I'd lived almost fifteen years without a moot of ninja training. If the children in this world started at the bottom of a mountain, I had to climb the same mountain, but begin at the bottom of the sea. I told him I'd do menial chores for the Chuunin; I'd clean toilets in the Academy, for the rest of my life, for just the chance to fail. This dismal fate didn't hit me until some days later; right now I couldn't focus. The only thing that seemed real to me was going to sleep soon, and very soon- not tomorrow. I wasn't promised tomorrow.

Luckily, my roommate had a few tricks up his sleeve- and someone who would help me immeasurably through the first few months of my Shinobi life.

* * *

In the whole of my existence, there was no other time that someone could have bought my love and trust for the low, low price of a spare futon, a dirty yukata, and a few kunai knives. Iruka took advantage of this unprecedented bargain.

Granted, he hadn't wanted to give them up; he probably hadn't wanted to answer the door, considering that Naruto came banging on the door in such a way as to make it ridiculously clear that he wanted a favor. But he did come to the door, his hair wet; looked like he was trying to relax after a long day of yelling at Naruto, in fact.

"Iruka-_seeeeennnsssseeeeeiii_!"

"Who told you where I live, you little miscreant!"

"Iruka-sensei! We need to borrow some stuff! 'Cause on account of she's gonna be living with me from now on, that's all."

His reaction was, typically, overblown. "_WHAAAAATTTT!"_

"It's not like that, sir!" I tried to explain, which Naruto bolstered valiantly: "Yeah, it's not like she's my girlfriend or anything! She's just a random homeless gypsum!"

"Gypsy, you moron! Gypsum is a rock!"

"Whatever. She can do magic!" he shouted, apparently forgetting our unholy deal. I had no choice but to punch him in the ribs. "OW- you really think I'd pick a girlfriend that ugly?" And again. "_Tu madre_!"

"Naruto, why are you taking in homeless people!- and what do you mean, magic? Are you insa!- wait, yes, you are…"

Every good greeting in Konoha is nice and loud, apparently; Iruka was shouting into the stairwell, and Naruto could hardly be expected to maintain a normal voice; the high register was already grating on my nerves. It was Maile Flanigan whining, while high on caffeine; worse than the dub.

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT!" Naruto shrieked, confirming my hatred. "JUST GIVE US SOME STUFF SO YOU CAN GO TAKE YOUR MIDOL, YOU CRAB!"

Seeming to acquiesce to the reality that making sense with Naruto was a fruitless endeavor, the harried-looking young Chuunin cast his chocolate gaze onto the rumpled, grungy form of space-traveler me. Seeing the way he gazed down on me only confirmed what I had known even back in my own world: that Iruka was a good man, and someone who couldn't contain his feelings all too well. He was too truthful for this life; too good for it. I loved him immediately.

"Are you going to introduce us," came from the straight-backed, navy-clad form as he moved down a hallway of exquisitely small size (Shinobi apartments, I was soon to gather, are all the size of dorm rooms, and hold an entire life instead of a shallow student. The proliference of the owner's humanity simply fills the space, cluttering it in a way that you learn to appreciate), "or did you invite her in without even asking her name?"

"Yeah," Naruto answered absently; he was clambering on top of the dingy kitchen counter, the size of a small cutting board, and pilfering with his head completely inside of the single cabinet. "HEY, YOU'VE GOT KATSUDON RAMEN! They were out of it when I went-"

"I'm eating toxic, pork-flavored death all week because of your little splurge at Ichiraku, thank you very- Naruto, I put food there! Get down!"

"SHOE GERMS, SHOE GERMS!" he sang in response, as he proceeded to perform an awkward little tap dance. I knew personally that if I had tried something like that at home, I would have no teeth left to eat ramen with. With no mother to beat him, I supposed that Sakura would be doing him a favor very soon.

"You're not even supposed to have shoes- next time I'm going to push you off the Hokage Monument, you hear!" Iruka was often frustrated, something told me. He merely sighed, and prodded me with a mass of stale-smelling blankets he had gotten from some invisible closet. "As you may gathered, I'm Umino Iruka. I'm a teacher at the Academy…and this little dorkbreath here is my unfortunate mascot." Naruto merely humphed, and danced again spitefully. "And you are?"

"Consuelo. Consuelo Ortega."

"Con…Ko-n-su-e-ri-o? That's a lot of characters… where are you from anyway, Conswearo?"

"You can just call her Psycho-Bitch- I do!" Naruto added helpfully. "JUST EAT THE RAMEN AND SHUT UP!" Iruka roared; the match went to a gleeful Naruto. Iruka sighed again. "Gypsy name, I guess… Ever thought about a nickname?"

"How about _Chin-chin_-chan? OH SHIT, MY NOODLES-"

"STOP SWEARING! And no, we are not calling her a slang term for- for-"

Naruto had spilled boiling water with pork flavoring into his lap; burns seemed to be his least concern, however, because he was clutching the styrafoam cup over the crease of his pants, in an attempt to get as much water back to use as he could.

"Ha! Burned _your_ chin-chin did you? That'll teach you- … Are you sure you want to room with him, Kon-chan?"

And just like that, I had a new name. My official one, the one on the Shinobi ID card that was meant to identify my remains if they were charred or smashed beyond recognition, would arrive at the end of the week and would feature the single _kanji _for guts or will, which makes the 'kon' sound in the dense Japanese figures that everyone but me could read. I figured I'd need every bit of will to get by, so I accepted it; I tried to find bravery in the brushstrokes when I wrote it, over and over, while Naruto slept that night and I didn't.


	3. All Around

**AN: Now, the pragmatism: here's where all that joy starts to come down. I'll bet you can hardly wait (I know I couldn't; the first chapters were murderous to write, so... cheerful. I don't do 'cheerful')**

**Expressing Consuelo's displacement was the absolute highlight of writing this. I loved toying with her uniquely-human weaknesses, stretched and pummeled as she will be in this new world- especially the illiteracy. Hurry up and enjoy!**

* * *

"_Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees, and marmalade skies-"_

I could have believed in marmalade skies; but the endless firmament opened before me like a rose when I awoke one morning (I have no idea how long I'd been sleeping on Naruto's floor, or if I had been buried in that other life, if my coffin was closing just as I opened my eyes here-). It was a watercolor nebulae of cherry sunlight, gently beckoning. Soon it's zenith would scorch the earth and give way to the moon; but I had never seen such a cloudless sky, a morning that could have been painted by some celestial artist while I slept, stagnated.

I stared out of that window for a long time, speechless; I hadn't spoken much yet. Naruto brought me the cup of tea he'd diligently make every morning, and I would wait until he'd left to meet his team before raising it to my lips. I couldn't stay here, but just getting up seemed more impossible than leaping through worlds.

But I had, and I did get up; I wiped the grime from my face on that day, beneath the bunting of a dawning morning, and walked around until I found the Academy school yard. I couldn't have died, just to die again without even trying, the sky had taught me that morning.

Things got better after that.

* * *

My strength came back in days, as I put myself to doing whatever it was that the Academy teachers needed. It was kind of like the job I had had in the children's library: menial tasks, especially organizing, hand-copying papers, and grading written tests. It made no sense the first few times it happened, but I could have believed in anything from the moment I looked up and saw the streets of Konoha.

Remember that Disney movie,_ Pocahontas? _My dad ruined that movie for me by pointing out that Pocahontas couldn't have possibly understood John Smith's English. But I have to confirm now that language is just a front for expressing things humans know within their bones, and we are innately meant to understand one another: I didn't think I was 'listening with my heart'- I sure as hell wasn't as brave as Pocahontas- and yet what I said in English (and sometimes Spanish) was, somehow, translated in midair. I understood the people of this world, and the understood me. I don't know if language doesn't exist as a dimension in this world (heck, animals can talk here, too), or if the hearts of the people here are somehow more receptive, that they still carry some innocence that allows them to connect with the soul even in the face of their violent society- I really don't know.

They say that writing carries some of the character and emotion of the writer, but not enough, apparently: I was functionally illiterate in the ninja world. Even the shortest messages confounded me; I had to learn Japanese just to read delivery addresses and grocery lists, which someone could just read aloud to me and I would entirely understand. This worked backwards, too: my writing, in the script of English and Spanish, was unintelligible to my friends. As far as I figured, everything of the past was written in Japanese, with it's heavy ideograms and intense, zealous beauty; statues, signs at the temple, even the names of stores were penned in grand characters. But perhaps because the average Shinobi was too busy learning to dodge danger to memorize over five-thousand stroke combinations to spell out a minimal vocabulary, most prose was written in the phonetic _hiragana_, with nouns being represented in _katakana._ The last Shinobi war had produced a generation that barely had time to grow up before they were thrown onto the battlefield, and who were nearly illiterate in the timeless _kanji_ writing of their fathers. So their loss of a language was a sad boon for me: I only had to learn one hundred and four letters of alphabet and various Japanese words before I could read… It was kind of like learning Hebrew to read English messages.

And yet, as they did in everything, the Shinobi managed to thrive. Exposure was the best teacher, and I even learned, by the end of my life, to read a good many of the old _kanji_. What the future of the Shinobi world will be written in, I can't even imagine.

But they continued; I continued, and I learned their ways. I swore them to my heart after that morning that I had awoken to that hopeful sky; the easiest thing to do was to put Consuela away and just be Kon-chan, to simply live for now.

* * *

I started hounding Naruto to teach me as soon as I felt able. I was scared to know anything about the state of my chakra nodes- who knew if I even had any?-, but I would steal books from the children's library and translate, sometimes with Iruka's help, how to summon this energy. One day I felt ready, and went for broke: placed my fingers into a glass of water until all was still, and then tried to radiate energy from my fingers. I was on the verge of tears, thinking I could never become a Shinobi without it (I was no Rock Lee); what happened was that not only did I produce chakra from my fingers, but the glass exploded from the pressure that I poured into it. I never let that happen again; I was always working on expulsion and keeping chakra in one place; when I couldn't sleep, I would practice moving it to my different limbs, focusing on the dark ceiling. With a few sleepless nights, I could form chakra with the most basic ninja-ed class. It was, too me, an unprecedented wonder.

I learned Henge in a day; for some reason holding another form simply made sense to me, like writing had, and I stuck with it. By the end of the afternoon I passed out from chakra exhaustion, but Naruto could call out everything he could think of, from a flowervase to the Hokage, and I could mimic it. It was the push I needed; I told him to teach me to make Shadow Clones. The Jounin-level technique was a ridiculous goal, and I never quite got the hang of it. I'm glad nobody told me that it was such an impossible technique; otherwise I might not have worked and trained as hard as I did.

My body, of course, was in no condition to fight or train, after fifteen flabby years of sitting behind a desk; I didn't have half of the average Genin's stamina at first. But in a world where my old passions suddenly had no fruit, my strength came in throwing myself entirely into whatever it was that passed my fancy. I was no genius, but I would practice and practice; I even found myself making hand seals in my sleep, once. Becoming a Shinobi consumed my whole mind, ebbing away the pain and fear I felt. I made up chants to sing while I filed papers; and I'd run home every night to throw some warm food together for Naruto, in the hopes that he'd teach me something new. Three months, we spent, throwing kunai at pictures of Sasuke and eating cold leftovers (my cooking, however, failed to improve). For three months I would flip the low table against the wall at night so I could lay down my old, stinky bedding and wait for the next day. For three months I practiced chakra control by making deathly leaps towards the second-floor window (lots of strange bruises), until the next rotation of genin 'seniors' could present before the Academy teachers and receive their headbands.

When they called my name, I didn't care- my triumph was walking across the ceiling, rather than the floor, and popping down in front of Iruka-sensei's delighted face. All of the little kids, who had teased me in their juvenile way, laughed with joy; and they learned to walk on walls faster because I showed them how even someone born to never know the Shinobi arts could make it.

Maybe I did have a little Lee in me, after all…

* * *

The headband didn't mean that I got to stop; in fact, having a hitate-ate meant that I now had status as a Konoha Shinobi, and that I qualified for my own small apartment; my job was gone, and I now had all day to train. I didn't want to move out; Naruto didn't want me to either, though he pretended to be sick of me. He came over so often, in fact, that it hardly seemed like I had moved out at all. We pooled our D-rank mission money to buy groceries, talked about how Sasuke couldn't be headed for anything good, and of course practiced shruiken. I never knew how much those hours meant to Naruto; he was very good at concealing what my company meant to him. I would only know one day about five years later, when he was leaving the village with one of the Sannin, when he told me he had thought of me as a sister and Sasuke as his brother. I wasn't allowed to bring it up again; he was too embarrassed.

I'd become a part of a family, by the time that the Chuunin Exams rolled around. My world was about to soar open like that sky- and I'd finally have my chance to inspire, just as it had.


	4. Surround Sound

**AN: Okay, yes, I'm bringing my favorite Green Beasts into this- BUT THEY'RE SO AWESOME, I CAN'T HELP IT. They're going to add to her character...and mind you, Kon never named the father of her children in the letter, did she? -malignant giggle-**

_

* * *

_

_My mom was a brunette, like me; I had the gracile fingers, the squat chin and the olivine skin of the dead Aztecs, but that was where my Latina-ness ended. I was a watered-down Chicana who learned Spanish simply because my mother was dead-set that I grow up speaking 'Americano Spanish', not Mixteco or Nahuatal. She learned to speak all of them in her time, and was a whole different kind of strong, my mom; she gave up on God when her husband drove off with all of her things in the car, save for four year-old me, and from then on it was just us, _nosotras solas_. She had very deep eyes, I think, but not of a sad history; no, she was proud of who she was, and taught me to be loud and just the same..._

* * *

Of course, it didn't all fade away. Some days I'd collapse onto my worn futon (more comfortable than any bed I had known, like a cocoon where I was safe-) and the ministrations of my mother, of not knowing what had become of her, would make me tear at my hair in grief; or my best friend, drowning in school work without me, who'd sworn to get into whatever college I did. Without someone like Naruto around, the silence literally sucked at your bones. I spent nights sobbing soundlessly; I despaired leaving so quickly, with so much unfinished; who had I disappointed, dying the way I did? Could I even name all of them? The regret was crushing, like the paving-stones they piled on prisoners back in Witch Trials. But focusing on those regrets does, I discovered, absolutely nothing to alleviate the pain. All you can do is put them out of your mind- as surely as you would another life- and just trek on. People forgive, even when they don't know it; and they would never suffer you to live if you could.

For everyone I had known, I carried on… and I tried to cry in my heart, like the Hokage had told me to.

* * *

I had been so consumed in this small wonder of a world that I had literally forgotten that I knew the answers to what the future held. And time passed so differently here- there were years and years unaccounted for by the manga that I had to live with the characters. But I remembered on a long, sun-speckled afternoon as Naruto and I chased one another in the green fields; Sasuke and Sakura were there, too. I'd loved games, and I'd made up a war scenario; frogs, it was. We'd found the summer swarm of new frogs. It was boys versus girls, and Sakura and I were crouching in a tree waiting to shower an entire bucket of the things down on the pair of them. Her hair was still long, and I didn't hate her as much as I thought I would, even if she was a freaky fangirl (I had been one myself once). The forest could light up her eyes up so rarely, like spangles through the clearest jade, and she was just beautiful; it was a good day to be alive, and I thought we'd never stop laughing. We both startled, and broke into giggles again, when Kakashi stuck his solemn, silver head up to our perch.

"Kon-chan, I have someone I want you to meet," came his slick voice. Kakashi was everything I had expected; sphinx-like, prehensile, brilliant, and quietly hilarious. I understood the distance that came from his legend, but he was alright, there on his lonely island. He wasn't asking for approval, and I learned whatever he had to teach with gratefulness and an almost boundless hunger. Today he held out his hand, to help me disengage from the tree- I took it and plopped down to the ground and he let my hand go once I was there. It was small things like that that let you know that Kakashi recognized you, because he wasn't an open man; he could hardly be expected to be.

But that day, he reminded me that there was more to the world.

A part in the bushes, through which I followed him quietly; a pair of black eyes, and a memory so strong that it wrenched my lungs. A tall man with shining hair gazed down smilingly at me; I woke up.

"So this is the 'gutsy' girl?" he asked kindly. Kakashi replied affirmatively, and even ventured to say a kind thing about how hardworking I was. "Ha!" Gai practically shouted, "I knew a girl with a name like that was a go-getter, no doubt about it!" No utterance by Maito Gai was complete without finishing off with one of his poses, of course; legs spread, he encircled one eye with clasped fingers, cast the other arm skywards, and winked with an audible sound effect at me.

I'd become a very quiet child, trying to process this strange world and to seem as if I belonged. But Gai-sensei struck me speechless; my mouth dried at the sight of him, because I _knew_. The Exams were coming, and all of the traumas and life-changing events that would follow.

And besides, I remembered: I had been a Rock Lee fangirl in my old life, and practically idolized Gai-sensei.

"Gai is a taijutsu specialist," Kakashi began drolly, "and we've known each other for some time."

"You mean, for my past _58 DEFEATS OF YOU IN VIGOROUS BATTLE!"_

"…No." the man deadpanned, sliding his one onyx eye shut. "Because I've never seen another man since who dared to wear spandex. But, don't get too traumatized, Kon-chan; I know a little about your becoming a Genin from Iruka, and I think that if you want to pursue a higher goal as a ninja, Gai-sensei would be the man to teach you. He practically worships sweat and training."

"And I've heard that you do little but that!" the dark-haired Jounin finshed, grinning. His teeth were even whiter than anticipated; their gleam practically deranged a person into grinning along with him. "I don't accept slackers…and besides, my rival is much too busy with his little rookies to be able to teach you. My students are already _leagues_ above his; there's little left for me to teach them!"  
"Oh, Gai, you sentimental old fool… Shall we remember who turned down a match last week in order to settle a spat between his two young 'prodigies'?"

"Tha-that was different! Neji was really going to kill Lee!"

Lee. Rock Lee, the bushy-browed prince of everything I had wanted to emulate: endurance, strength, confidence, and undying will. The serious-faced bishounen who's plushie likely still sat on my bed in the old life; whose keychains I had collected, and whose battles I had followed with special keenness. Even as a student, I had admired his perseverance and hoped to approach it in real life; he had my black eyes and thick hair, the same dreams.

The boy I had loved without having met; the boy who would be splattered across an arena floor amidst shattered dreams, within weeks.

… I had dreamt and prayed of him in my darkest, lonely hours, and known that the feelings I had for him were infallible, because ninjas didn't ebb and flow like My Kind. I had once known that I loved him- but now that I'd made the impossible trip and was only a decision away from meeting him, something in my heart stalled. It told me that if I truly cared for him, for Gai and all the people who had accepted me, that I would have to be careful, so careful, not to ruin their lives by a slip of tongue or an untimely negation.

But the promise I had made was to live, and so I did; and I couldn't, in the end, risk having never known them. Still it was far from being the dream reunion I had fantasized about in my plodding math classes; I was filled with terror as Gai dragged me along at top speed through the foliage, that chased feeling that would soon become so native to my blood.

* * *

All too soon, we rounded a bend into blinding sunlight.

… Nobody was there.

"Well," Gai harrumphed; my stomach did such a flip that I had to quietly crouch down and place my head between my knees. Lumbering with his massive stride across the parched clay, my new teacher began inspecting the recent signs of life which one could guess his students had left behind: kunai biting the earth and growing like lichen around the center of a shruiken target, and the curdling bark of a tree that had just had the life kicked out of it.

He had the expression of a letter bomber: squinched eyes, scrunched nose. With the wariness of a bomb disarmer, Gai even reached down to sniff a suspecting patch of grass. I was pretty sure he didn't need to have done that…

"AH, THE SWEET SMELL OF YOUTH!" he suddenly declared; birds scattered from nearby trees at his hoot of glory. "My students have labored diligently today! Do you sweat a lot?"

"Umm… Yes."

"Fabulous, then! The more you sweat, the more I'll become intoxicated with the desire to make you a great ninja! You'll be wringing out your clothes every day, my dear! Sounds good, huh?"

Oh my lord- these people were even willing to accept my ridiculous tendency to sweat like a hog. I would even wear the green suit for him, I decided.

"YOSH-SHAAAAAA! Let's go track down my darling pupils and sneak-attack them with the agility of our Springtime! COME, KON-SAN!"

It surprised me that a grown man was calling me 'san'; I'd grown fond of 'chan', even if it was a bit immature. Kakashi called anybody shorter than his shoulder 'chan', and even Iruka used it; a kid my age wasn't worth respecting that much, especially by a man who was expected by tradition to beat my head into the ground. It was a little gesture that made me stand up straighter inside. (More brownie points for him, I'm afraid. I'd be as bad as Lee, writing down Gai's every vocalization, if this kept up…)

My mind revolted, asking into the darkness of the knowing unknown how I could possibly not belong as his devoted student.

* * *

Oh, the confidence to be so loud and expressive- Gai feared nothing, and even if he did, he never gave his pursuers the honor of seeing it. It was the same semi-arrogance that Kakashi and Asuma walked with, because they were the owners of this land; they were the protectors, the inheritor of something so big that I could scarcely imagine its grandeur. They had every right to swagger; if anybody wanted to comment on it, I'm sure that they could have just knocked said invader's teeth into next Friday.

He flew through the forest as if its tangles were written in the marrow of his being. He never stumbled or faltered; he had enough strength for the both of us, as I found out. The expenditure of chakra was still hard, and my whimpering body still grew fatigued so quickly; the shame of falling in front of Gai became the only thing keeping me upright. When the mammoth of Konoha finally paused to catch his breath, I about dropped on my face behind him. For the first time since we'd begun our bound through the trees, Gai turned to look at my scrunched form.

And then, it happened.

An iron clamp fastened around my ankle, so suddenly that I let out a shrill sound; a jerk that hid unbelievable strength suddenly sent me airborne- and I don't mean simply a short tumble. He _threw _me, with a single tug. I flew up over Gai's head, pinwheeling from the shock of the sudden lack of stability; flipping over and over until, with a thud that must have been something like my falling off the bridge, I landed in a heap in my sensei's grasp. He took off the very same instant. My eyes were probably the size of plates.

"YOSH-SHAAA!" he cried again; his throat was against my flailing head, which meant that he had just screamed right in my ear. There was no time to nurse my bleeding eardrum, though: as he soared into the summery air, Gai literally almost dropped me. I was lighter than he'd expected, you see, and the speed of his jump tore me from him like a leaf. Before I could even resign myself to this new death, though, this Titan of weirdness ricocheted faster than sight could follow and rammed me against his shoulder. He hung unto my ankle and took off again, at the speed of a lander escaping orbit- with me dragging over his back like a sack of potatoes. I was totally limp.

"Sorry," he condescended. "Don't know my own strength!"; the drool escaping my mouth prevented me from replying, or even asking him to slow the hell down. He took off at previous speed, completely at home in this forest and with the world that had required him to become so mighty.

* * *

I am told that our first meeting went something like this:

His punches thundered, but the ethereal, sky-renting might that could have been capsized into the palms of Neji's cupped guard; a shift and a stab, as natural as breath. Neji danced right, but Lee followed him seamlessly. The blows seemed to go on forever: bandaged limbs piercing, crashing down with the power to break bones, and the give of bandages their only remnant of existence. Lee and Neji's hands alone were involved in this fight; behind their guard both boys were staring death into one another's eyes, while behind them their minds flew in endless preparation, execution, and model avoidances. They were a ballet of testosterone and rare, underaged talent; of will meeting will, diamonds beaten together until they produced sparks. Lee stepped aside of a full-forward blow; he'd tried to avoid Neji without touching him because his fingers ached from catching the last blow, but the Hyuuga had planned even that: with a sideways ejection, Neji's pointed blow sought for the tender vertebrae of his opponent's neck. The only thing that could save Lee was, well, his Lee-ness.

Green body simmering with heat, the boy flung back his upper body, impossibly close to the ground; his legs kicked up, in a flip from a standing position. These acrobatics had a way of overwhelming his straight-laced rival: one sure kick, past the pale shaft of his high hand, sent Neji's imposing form flying in the opposite direction, his arms flailing as he sought to keep his balance.

Lee wasn't that awesome, though; Gai and I rounded the corner just as the boy landed squarely on his shiny little head, and flopped to the ground in a dazed pile of numbed limbs. We've all probably done something like this before on a trampoline, trying to do a flip; that thought cruised into my brain calmly, serenely, after the initial horror of thinking that my favorite ninja had just paralyzed himself in front of my very eyes. If Gai hadn't held onto me, I would have fainted dead away.

"Guys, I have someone for you to meet!" he cried, as though he were enticing grade-schoolers. I was oozing out of his grasp, waiting to make sure Lee wasn't a paraplegic. Thus distracted, I slid off of Gai's shoulder and had to catch myself before _I_ landed on my face, as Gai kneeled down beside his student.

"Lee? Are you…alright?" the man asked lightly.

"Y-Yes, sir," came the dazed reply. I swooned; Lee could still talk!

"_THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOULET NEJI KNOCK YOU DOWN, HUH!"_ came, shortly followed by the BLAM of Gai socking Lee square in the head.

Tenten and Neji made faces; my mouth was wide open. What part of 'spinal injury' didn't this guy understand? Mother of god- never mind me, Lee was in mortal danger with that teacher of his around!

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" repented the green-clad teen; he ducked to avoid any more blows, but had to pounce out of the way as Gai slammed a kick down where he had been sitting. "APOLOGY _NOT _ACCEPTED! The enemy never stops, Lee- you don't get to rest until they're out of commission! I'm a bloodthirsty dinosaur intent on making you my Jurassic burger- now, stop me! RAAARGH!", he roared helpfully.

"I believe the prehistoric beast part," I heard everyone's favorite Hyuuga smart-ass murmur. Lee, with an open-mouthed, roaring Gai pursuing him and waving Tyrannosaurus arms, of course ignored Neji. The solemnity with which these teammates watched the world go by took me aback; from Neji there radiated a serious intent, a coolness of regard that blazed before him like an aura of ice. And Tenten was, I can safely say, just as we think of her in the anime: aloof, overreactive, and always right behind Neji. The pair of them looked to me coldly, Neji's lavender eyes appraising the weak flaws he could see even without the Byakugan.

Screw you, I thought.

"Sensei, wait for me!" I yelled, plunging into the forest after their twin, broad backs. "It's _Velociraptor_ Time! _BWAAARR!"_

Dignity be damned. Life was more fun on the Green Side.

* * *

**Again, mind you, this does NOT mean that Kon ends up with Lee. You'll have to seeee... -dances gleefully- **


	5. Remembering Estrogen

**AN: You know, I've been so good for so long, making Kon all pragmatic and traumatized... but guess what? It's Hormone Time. Stand by through the awkward teenaged encounter herein, I promise, something relevant happens. **

**

* * *

**

These things I learned, in the months before Naruto went off to the Wave Country and came back a child with a prophecy to fulfill:

One: always ask someone to look at your hair _before_ you waste two weeks trying to manipulate chakra…

And two: like that song says, living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking; loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making.

* * *

Daily Schedule:

5 a.m: Get up to Gai and Lee pounding on my apartment's door, to find that they have walked on their hands to get me up for training.

5:30: Sit on Lee's back while he does 3,000 pushups, while wringing stones in order to strengthen my hands.

6:30: Walk on my hands to buy meat buns for breakfast; if I beat Lee there, he must do 400 jumping jacks. If I lose, I take his place and he does 400 low kicks. I always lose.

8:30: Neji and Tenten arrive from home. Tenten's hair is always perfect; so is Neji's, which I inevitably comment to Lee about.

9:00-12:00: Jutsu training (mostly chakra manipulation, which Gai has come up with to help up my speed)

12:01: Neji and Tenten pull out their lunch; Gai throws our rice balls on top of a rocky cliff and Lee and I must climb for sustenance.

2:00: Team spars. Neji is forbidden from using Gentle Fist on me, but he still zaps me when he can. I try not to let his snarky comments sting me. Tenten summons every weapon she has, for me to dodge; I have to learn fast, and it works. Finally I face Lee. He is unspeakably gentle, and will show me how to punch four hundred times if that's how many it takes. I love this part of the day just for the moments where he holds my waist and shows me the right stances, the magic steps.

3:00: Neji and Tenten head home, to study a while and loiter around doing teenager things. Even Gai is ready for a break. I go home and collapse, sweat-soaked and exhausted, into dreamless sleep.

5:00: But not for long. Then it's off to Gai's for 'special' training, which sounds perverted but is actually only weird beyond reason. While Gai does crunches (WHERE does he get the energy!), Lee inserts peanuts in between Gai's abs. Sensei shells them in this manner, which Lee throws to me. I am to 'read' a book of Shinobi physics aloud to them (mostly ad-libbing, because at this point I recognize about…ten hiragana), and catch the peanuts in a bowl without looking up; I am then made to eat the ones I drop. Gai and Lee then blindfold themselves, and try to catch the remaining peanuts which I am obliged to throw for their exercise. If Gai has a mission, we are obliged to torture ourselves in his absence, anyway; but we cheat and use candy.

6:00: Throw up peanuts/candy. Go down the street to the oden store and order a big, fat bowl of 5 ryou noodles. Nobody starves in Konoha. Crave latkes and sopapillas.

7:00: Collapse at home; occasionally fit in a shower if I smell so bad that I keep myself up.

Strangely, I preferred having Sensei around. When it was up to Lee to make up our training routine, bad things happened. Except for that one time…

* * *

Despite having the life drained from me by two spandex-clad lunatics and their seemingly endless reserves of energy, I still had some semblance of self. I became a girl again, instead of a quiet intruder who knew they didn't belong; I helped Naruto with his laundry, ran errands for Iruka-sensei, laughed for real again. My body was forgetting my old life, and my mind did- for a while. There were just too many good things happening.

I remember that day because it was the beginning of things I couldn't imagine.

It was one of those accursed days: Gai was off in the River Country on a prolonged mission, and Lee had come up with some new way to torture me. Without sensei's bouncy obsessiveness, Lee was notably quiet, as if a limb had fallen off…well, as quiet as Rock Lee can be.

Like I said: new 'training'. Lovely, I remember thinking. When it became clear that Lee was marching straight towards the river, this 'joy' only increased. Not only was Lee not going to take it easy on me, but he was going to drown me on top of it. I told him that, to which he responded, "Can you not swim well, Kon-chan?"

Stupid, stupid me...

"Just paddle your legs like- well, not like that!"

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT ME TO DO!" I screamed, barely lifting my mouth from the gaping cold of the crystal water. At my insistence Lee had allowed me to knot a bit of rope around my waist, which was tied to a rock. I was to swim, against the significant current, back to the sandbar and to safety, and maybe I'd get some peanuts if I was good. As it stood, I had my feet buried in the river-bottom silt, trying to make Lee believe that I was buoyant and didn't need this lesson. My arms, however, were pin-wheeling in a distinctly unprofessional way, in the foreign world all around my neck.

"This is not quite so hard as you are making it!"

"IF I DIE, I'M GOING TO –blubbber- COME BACK FROM THE –blub- DEAD AND KILL YOU."

Lee seemed unconvinced; I hated him for sitting on that nice, dry rock with time-worn troughs carved into it's sides. It was still quite hot out, even as Fall approached; the cold water just reminded you of how miserably so. I'd had about enough of Green Beasts for the day.

"Kon-chan, you must try. Perhaps you need a bit of help-"

"NO, LEE, DON'T UNTIE THE ROPE, PLEASE-" Too late; the current finally prevailed against my spread stance, and knocked me beneath the roiling waters. I was never a swimmer in my other life, despite having grown up near the beach; I had nearly drowned in a pool when I was six, and had been wary of water ever since. _Madre a dios!_

I couldn't find up; my lungs felt bitten, bruised, tumbling in my chest as the current bounced me against the rounded rocks dotting it's silent bottom. The t-shirt someone had loaned me billowed, seeming to slow me even more, cloying a watery death. But what could you do? If I drowned here who knew where I'd end up: Narnia? Karakura Town? Who knew, and who controlled all this shit, anyway?

I heard the burst of my own body; my neck strained, searching for the land of Up- and there it was, bark-tasting breath and trash floating along the banks. I gasped hideously, choking on the water that was leaking painfully through my nose. Filled with air, I was lighter; I could float, I realized, if I would only relax. My head dipped back into the soundless world, and I loosened my muscles. Yes, I could survive in water, float to safety-

This reverie was interrupted by a Herculean splash and a wave of bubbles directly in front of me. My nose smashed into what felt like a ribbed wall of stone; I clung to the object instinctively, because it wasn't going anywhere, wrapping my legs around it and struggling to climb back up to the air. It was only when I was hacking directly in his face that I realized I was closer to Rock Lee than I could have ever dreamed: nosebleed close. All I could feel (besides my brain hemmoraging with hormonal impulses) was the tautness of the wet, suntanned skin I was gripping; his solid legs anchored in a torrent that had ripped me right off of my feet, and the even ripples of spine along his bunched, naked back. He had never been so heroic- or so shirtless. Spandexless.

"You really are not a very good swimmer, Kon-chan." Lee observed uselessly.

Letting go of him would mean being torn back into the water world, so I had no choice; I think I lost two quarts of blood, feeling him move bloody right up against me. All I could think was, _do not move, do not move, he will get a hard-on and your mom will come here somehow and beat you to death for being so close to a boy-_

"Are you alright, Kon-chan?"

"Gwaaaa…" was all I could mutter.

When his feet caught, he pitched forward, depositing me in a sitting position back on the original sands of comfort. Oh, bless dry land- bless oxygen, which had escaped me even after Lee had dragged me up to the surface. My heart was still throbbing. I wish I could say I was making up what happened next, but…alas. He'd pulled his jumpsuit down around his waist, knotting the sleeves around his waist (at least that lump wasn't what I'd thought it was…). Before reclothing himself, my eyebrow-endowed savior regarded the soggy bandages swelling, useless, from his arms, and shook them away. The appeal that those pitted, dark forearms and slim hands held for me practically turned my legs to jelly. Sunlight positively _spangled_ off of a washboard set of abs and the most robust, solid chest that it had ever been my thrill to view; to dry that sopping bishounen hair, now in strands that revealed ears that begged to be nommed, required only a stiffening of his aqualine neck; I could even see the beads of water on his eyelashes. It was the most blatant appeal to every one of the fangirl preferences I'd forgotten that I had.

I put a hand over my mouth, two fingers between my eyes; I had to do something, or he would realize that I was burning a hole with my eyes in his unspeakably rigid stomach and every curvature of firm muscle that strained with his arms- lord, I knew girls who would have sold their _souls_ to be sitting here.

Finally, the gaze of Olympus fell upon the poor mortal woman who he had saved; and with black eyes full of sweet care, he asked if I was alright, again.

"I'm fi-" I started to say; but as I drew the hand away from my face something wretched up in my throat, stunningly cool and silken. I threw myself down onto my hands and knees, choking- and with the movement of the hand I had held to my face, the water I had swallowed dashed itself against the shore.

I didn't believe what I had just seen; neither did Lee. He was so fascinated that he forgot to pull his shirt-part back up, which I pleasantly watched while I figured out what the hell I had just done.

* * *

Gai didn't have to come find me, the next morning. It was Lee (now sufficiently clothed) and I that tore up to his stodgy apartment door, down a hallway scraped an erstwhile butter-color from countless dings and shaded with grime. He must have been out cold, poor guy; we had to bang for a while before he appeared in the doorway. By this time we were beyond speech.

"SENSEI! SENSEI!" "SENSEI!" we shrieked, jumping up and down like toddlers.

"KON-CHAN-" "I DID-" "SHE MOVED THE-" "LEE BISHOUNEN-NO-JUTSU'ED!" "-THE WATER, SHE MOVED IT-"

"Whoa, you two!" he finally cried, a tired laugh rippling in a voice I had never heard from my zippy, blindingly-bright teacher. "Come inside and calm down! You're probably waking everyone in the building. And what'd you just say, Kon-chan?..."

* * *

"Do it, do it!" Lee whispered furiously once we were inside. He plopped a plastic cup of water onto the miniscule coffee table and practically sat me down in front of it; Gai was hovering in the semi-dark, while Lee's bright face circled like that of a hungry wolf. "Show him, show him!"

So I did. I slipped my hand into the cool of the liquid, and flexed my fingers; I could feel the chakra traveling outwards, and the indescribably linking that had occurred on the shore. Concentrating, I watched the ring on my finger come closer to my periphery. Indescribably, the water in the glass snaked out to follow my fingers, turning into a floating mass that hung above the table.

I wasn't disappointed; Lee and Gai set to exclaiming so that surely nobody else in the building was getting sleep. They demanded that I repeat the trick at least five times, and with each repetition I could exert better control over the quivering blob. I even managed to make it travel the length of the little table, from Gai to Lee. The moment I broke the chakra concentration, though, the mass of water splashed messily down, most ending up on the floor.

"Ah," Gai finally exclaimed. Lee was laughing with joy, those keen eyes watching my fingers as if they had suddenly become holy sacraments. "I'm guessing that your elemental chakra nature has been awakened, Kon-chan."

"The what of the who?" I asked incredulously. Holy mother- maybe I w_asn't_ a failure after all!

"Every Shinobi has an element that they naturally heed to; it determines the kind of jutsu one can use. You seem to be a Water-type, given how you took to that. The talent of the Water ninja is an ability to meld their energy with the hydrogen bonds in water molecules, you see- and their chakra flows in a way that is more controlled than, say, Fire-type or Lightning-type."

"What do you mean, sensei!" Lee piped in.

"Ah, my eager pupils… listen good," the man said good-humoredly. "Fire-types have difficulty managing how much power they produce because of the unstable bond they have with the constantly-moving flame. My Earth elemental chakra is the perfect hindrance to Kakashi's Lightning-type, which is powerful but difficult to direct; Earth-types are sure and bold, but they have a hard time getting the energy moving and formed, you know? Lee's a total Earth-type; he's got no talent for chakra manipulation whatsoever!" I know, it sounded hurtful, but Lee just grinned anyway.

"Wind-type can really shuffle some chakra around," he continued, "but they are worse than even Fire at controlling how much energy they let out- It's like trying to catch the wind, literally! And Water-type, well- Water-types are in very good control of their energy; they can almost seamlessly meld with things and flow. Their weakness is, though, that you need a lot of water to accomplish anything, and your control loosens the more water you gather. A huge amount of training is required to become a successful Water-type, and even then most of them prefer to abide by their own strength. Do you two know, perhaps, the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist?"

"Zabuza!" I shouted; luckily, Gai didn't wonder where I'd gotten my information. It was all starting to come back. Gai was too excited, totally in the teaching element. "Right! By flowing power through a large sword, Water-types can increase the strength of regular blows, and even move at high speeds by swirling chakra on the soles of their feet! It's like spiritual silicone spray!"

"Awesome!" Lee shouted; with this he snatched my open palm and began inspecting it. He was so excited that I hardly knew what to say. Did he have such a good heart than even watching me- the one person who Neji thought a bigger letdown than him, absurdly old and yet possessing the skills of an Academy student- could really make him so genuinely happy? This boy had shared his beloved teacher, his time and boundless endurance with me; motivated and included me. As his thin fingers, cold, encircled my own warm ones, my heart petered so audibly that I'm sure Gai understood the look that washed over my face.

"But I don't want you getting too excited, Kon-chan," he suddenly interrupted; I thought his eyes narrowed. "Water-types are known to awaken earlier than other chakra types; they need the extra practice time, rest assured. This doesn't mean you get to take a break. No way! Your stamina is still so low, and your body so weak that you could be easily toppled! You're still nowhere near the level of the other Genin, even that one little spazzo, Naruto… Imagine, you, already a young lady and no better than Lee was at seven!"

I had lowered my head as Gai buttered these truths heavily over my accomplishment. The smart was unbelievable; I still had so far to go. The path seemed overwhelming, the climb insufferable; I'd hardly made it to sea level, and still the mountain loomed. That's what was running through my mind when I felt a soft caress; the warmth of Gai-sensei drawing close, and the lag of a kiss on my forehead.

"That said," he continued, light low on his smooth cheekbones, "I am so proud of you, Kon-chan. You have fought this far by yourself, and I promise to do everything I can to help you do what you are meant to: excel. You are truly a student to brag about."

… Had a teacher ever told me that before? Had my mother's murmurs of love meant as much as those words, her assurances that I could press on despite difficulty and huge assignments, competition and uncertainty? Yes. The whole humanity of my person had carried over into this world, at last: people recognized my hard work, and I had made someone proud. That was all I had ever tried to do.

Even though I'd been speaking more, I was completely silent in the face of this twist of fate. I sat with my hands cupped over my knees, two pairs of sable eyes looming like bright baubles in the sable brown of morning peeking over the window ledges- and threw myself into Gai's arms, crying with content.

I never wanted to see those faces fall. I would never shame him. I would never let him doubt me: this would be my _nindo_, my ninja way.


	6. Get'cha Head In The Game!

**Author's Note: Kon is not a character I'm yet used to. She's so... normal. :[ (Yes, that sounds weird, but it's TRUE)**

**On to the Chuunin Exams! And of _course_ she's not going to make it. The other things she'll make happen, though...**

**

* * *

**

_It's like the book from Chobits: I'm walking around in a world of They, a city without any people like me. Nobody has my dark skin (which I considered light, back home), or my plain eyes; by some twist of nature they understand my Spanish, but they can't know the sierra-negra flame of pride in my heart, the pride of my heritage. Little old ladies tell me I'm exotic, sometimes even beautiful (definitely wasn't __that__ back home), but what I want is to hear them tell me that I'm a good ambassador for my far-gone world. I want them to know where I came from; what I'm made of._

* * *

There was no question of whether I was going to the Chuunin Exams.

I wasn't- plain and simple.

I had just become a Genin, Gai quietly told me one day, behind the bushes where Neji couldn't hear to mock me any more (I'd been trying so hard, and yet-); his kids had been training for two years, and he still almost didn't want to give them up to the jaws of the test. There was no way I was ready for a Chuunin-level experience; I could barely turn a water-jutsu, and had to carry water bottles around because I could only control small amounts, not summon it; my endurance was still so low compared to the other kids', I was scared of heights all of the sudden (no shit, Sherlock), and my reflexes had gotten better but not good enough. There were bears, he said, and poisonous plants; his kids knew how to track and how to lay snare traps. I'd be killed if I stopped for even a minute, and I'd be killed if I didn't stop, because an exhausted kunoichi was a dead one, Gai said.

He didn't say it to be unkind; rather, Gai was looking out for me in the only way he could as a teacher. There's no question that I wasn't ready; I knew he was right.

… But another part of me just whispered, _chingada_ to all of it. That was the angry wolf in me, fed by the long nights when I despaired about how weak I was instead of how lonely or far from my world I was. That fury grew in me like a fire tended by steady feeding, roaring lickets and new tendrils with every fall and disappointment, every word of Gai's that struck me like blows when I lay in the quiet dark.

That was the part of me that said: if you can't be on their level, if you can't protect them and fight by their side, then what on earth are you doing here, _chica_? Are you really just a floundering wannabee with no purpose in this place? That idea ate paths my brain; drove me bat-shit crazy-

Crazy enough to strike a devil's deal with the Hokage. I signed a waiver with blood from my thumb, the weight of what I was promising like a rock of the stuff coagulated in my stomach. I would participate in the Chuunin Exams by his mandate; I would have to complete team exercises by myself, with no one to help me. I would survive this or I would not, and my blood would not be on anyone's hands if (when) I got killed. He understood my desperation, my yearning for consequence and meaning in this place, just as he understood me that first day. I was so tired of lagging- it was time to make myself a name amongst Konoha's greatest generation, or die trying.

… Probably the latter, though.

* * *

First trial of the day: lying to Gai in order to get out of a 'Super Special Day of Individualized Training', and watching his whole persona crumble when I begged sick. Ibiki gave me a scary look, but acknowledged that the Hokage had 'especially' informed him of my situation and that Kurenai had bet fifty ryou that I would survive. She had a soft spot for underdogs, I guess.

Second trial: getting through the Forest alive. The quiz was- unbelievably- a piece of cake: nothing a little Algebra II with specialization in quadratics and a little elbow grease couldn't solve. (The other kids might have been my infinite superiors in Ninjutsu, but I could have creamed them on the SAT…Take _that_, Shinobi education system!).

And now loomed the Forest of Death Trial: leeches, unsafe water sources and killer Rain-nin- oh, my!

* * *

A plan was what saved me…even if it was an underhanded, nasty one bourne entirely of my experience memorizing the small details of manga series, and in two parts.

At the zenith of my fangirl obsession, I had adored Kabuto and filled entire notebooks with his visage. In person he was much more mousy, and very much personified the Evil Henchman look. I bore him no ill will for shattering my then-twelve-year-old heart – my soul now belonged to Lee, after all- and instead used him as he had… used me. Sort of. Here I impressed myself upon Orochimaru's fleet with the social retardation so typical of OCs.

"You want to look at my stat cards?"

"Yeah- only I need to look at all of the Konohagakure ninjas. I'll know them on sight. "

"Going to kill one of them especially?" the light-haired young man asked with a dapper incline of one eyebrow, as he swirled chakra through a handful of his trick cards.

"Not immediately- I like to play with my food first." I joked. "Umm, could you read the card out loud? That kid broke my glasses. When I get my hands on him…" I had Kabuto read several cards, just to be safe, and then put on a hormonal-dumb-Sakura act that had Kabuto shooing me away. Last thing I needed was to get anywhere near seeming like a threat that Orochimaru would want extinguished (Oh, how I would rue these words…)

But I found my guys: squad 38 of the Random Filler-Person Division of Konoha Shinobi. I codenamed them Tweedle, Dee, and Dum: they were plan A, if I received a Heaven scroll. Plan B was to repeat Plan A until I found someone with the right scroll, and then run like hell for the center of the Forest.

Strangely enough, this worked. Fate sure is fickle, isn't She?

* * *

There's something about the forest that lets you know that you don't belong there.

It could be all the shadows; whole worlds could be hiding in the dark clutches that you can't see. The canopy lets in the most minimal amount of light, dashing in your periphery and always seeming like a pursuing agent of death, a reaping angel following you on your foolish, human quest. You know that you're weaving between dangers by sheer probability; the stillness of the forest assures you of that. Nowhere can be so silent and yet so full of ominous whisperings, so mute and yet replete with dark intent. It's Minesweeper with real consequences; it's the constant discovery of new places where death can rain down on you, and the overwhelming helplessness you feel when the trees claw higher into the (lack of) sky than you can trace with your eyes. I fully believe now that the Forest of Death was once an Untouchable area of an ancient village, land where inexplicable evil lurks and the dying were sent. The American Indians used to call 'places where the four winds meet': the death above you is nothing compared to the death beneath, the malignant will supplied by participants of dark rituals with darker intentions.

They were right; I wasn't ready. Even when I wrapped myself in a barrier of kunai traps, I couldn't rest; that's where I learned that with one ear to the ground, you can eavesdrop on the tree-speak. The whole earth is like a conducting rod, the air and the ground interconnected; heaven and earth, an inexorable pair. The first night I lay completely still on the ground, stiff with fear and regret, listening to the water all around me- listening to the life of the trees and the halcyon babble of atoms.

As the sun rose, I lifted one hand and placed it square in a patch of rough, stubby grass; pulled, somehow, did something; and found my hand grow moist with condensation as the grass beneath my fingers withered. I had learned to draw water from a living object.

I could feel the phantom-fears dissipating, melting as the morning light soaked them. _El ciello_ always brought me what I needed it seemed, with the rising of _el sol_.

* * *

My plan went off without a hitch, luckily. I had indeed received a Heaven scroll, and now it was a matter of tracking Tweedle, Dee, and Dum until their historic appearance. I had a narrow window of time to sweep in; ridiculously narrow, on top of not getting pummeled to death by another Chuunin-hopeful. My Henge had been steadily improving, so a chakra trick timed right could usually keep me under the enemy radar. Usually. We'll get to that.

Day Two passed slower than molasses going uphill in the winter; it was hot, the odor of my sweat attracted a puma that was twice the size of a Hybrid car, and I nearly lost Tweedle, Dee, and Dum trying to save my skin. Perserverance is a wonderful thing; so is deodorant. But my moment of glory finally arrived, refreshing me for the traumas to come.

Tweedle diddled off to find food for his compatriots; Dee and Dum, typically as raucous and prone to rude exclamations as any boy from my high school would have been, plopped down and began discussing the trials of the Exam: one of them had been attacked by a Sand-ninja while attempting to lay waste in a bush (quite literally, caught with his pants down), the other was sick from eating a fruit that had numbed his entire mouth for a day. They complained like old men for a while, before the Naruto-looking-one broke out their sacred scroll and suggested opening it, against the orders of Anko. We all know what happens next: a Chuunin appeared to club them senseless.

"You pipsqueak bastards better _freeze,_" a deep voice rang through the reclining tree trunks.

Dee paused, his muddy fingers still clasping the fragile end of the rice paper; I still remember their eyes bugging out of their sockets when the Chuunin who had issued us our scrolls came striding into view. I knew they remembered him; I'd even made a rude jab at him when I was getting my own scroll, just to mimic his tone and complete the illusion.

"The hell!" 'Kotetsu' exclaimed, examining the situation. "Are you guys _brain-damaged_ or something?" he brayed. "Didn't we _tell _you _not_ to open those? Guess Konohagakure's really just slapping headbands on anyone with opposable thumbs now, ain't they?"

"H-How did you know-" Dum began, unconsciously scooching behind his teammate. Dee was paralyzed; he hadn't even blinked yet.

"What, you think we're dumb enough to trust you treacherous little hormone-sacks? We've got cameras _everywhere_, makin' sure that nobody's stupid enough to do something like this! Give me that thing!" 'Kotetsu' extended a tanned palm; I kept from snatching it from Dee's hand and glared into his green eyes. Victory was inches away.

Dee and Dum exchanged a horrified expression. "You guys see… everything?" one of them finally ventured.

"You don't even want to _know_ the things I've caught people doing in here…" the man sighed ruefully, before blowing a few dark strands of hair from his eyes and steeling, again of Chuunin iron. "Okay, seriously. I'm supposed to take that scroll from you now and beat the hell outta you- it's just policy. But I think you guys have enough work to do. I gotta take the scroll or Anko'll give me crap, but I won't break your skulls _this_ time. Do _not_ make me come see you again. Got it?"

"Yes, sir-" Dee murmured, and automatically proferring the green roll.

"Thank you, sir-" Dum continued. Japanese kids- they're so polite and respectful. I let the male face of my Henge shift into a smirk with a masked meaning, and spat swiftly onto the ground. The smoke pellets that had been rotting the taste of ash in my mouth exploded; in the chaos I broke the Henge, and darted up into the safety of the all-encompassing canopy.

* * *

I'd like to say things got easier after this. I'd also like to have a million ryou and a remote control for my husband and children.

Now all I had to do was avoid the bloodthirsty killers who would certainly flatten me like a latke for my two scrolls (they were tucked into my sports bra, so I'd be sure to break loose all hell upon the person who snatched for them). I'd hoped to time my dash for the tower before the Rain ninja that trapped Naruto and his team would take up their offensive jutsu; my main concern as I tore through the ragged brush, thorns scraping my flesh, was looking for death, evidence of a snare trap, senbon ambush, or buried poison-spikes, besides giant centipedes.

What I wasn't looking out for was, of course, the most dangerous threat.

The tangled pig-path broke into a dirt-lined clearing; the trees were decreasing in size gradually, signifying one's proximity to the center of the Forest. Sunlight peeked through daringly, in dappled patches, shifting from beneath the scrubby leaves of a thorn-plum tree. The toss and rile of it's brush-like limbs drew my eyes away from the path for a split second; and in following the lust to look up, a drifting specter of blood-red suddenly dotted my periphery. I was never a praying person; but my mind was filled to bursting at that second, so jammed that I couldn't stop the natural reflex of flight, with appeals to any deity who happened to be out there; a million prayers sent out in the moment that my spine contracted with a fear older than that great, gnarled tree.

Sabaku no Gaara's eyes wandered up this new installation to his vision just as a predator's do: the copper itch in their ice-colored depths coolly assessed my now-still form, his mind somehow completely distant from the reactions I could see bubbling up behind that waxen face. The memory of sulfur-smell made me flinch; that was the starkness about him, and the first stab of anxiety when one met his gaze. There was no flippiant disguise for the bloodlust; it merely radiated in waves from his slumped form, surrounding him and cresting tens of feet into the air like black billows of acidic, death-scented smoke. Gaara was smaller than I had expected, and yet his arms were corded with the unholy knowledge I had seen in so many Shinobi children thusfar; resolve, fear manifest in muscle. And his stance- the stiffness of his stance, the hollow ache in his limbs was naked and exposed: Gaara had never been comfortable in his life. Everything of him spoke of a schitzoid, neverending episode that had chased him and worn this boy down to a twitchy, sleepless stump of humanity with black, necrotic trenches surrounding his bottomless eyes . It was easy to sense, even from as far away as I was, the terror and evil that lurked around him like a dark cloud; it was even easier to confuse him with the entity within, if you gave over to that fear.

… After this description, one might wonder why I then shouted, "Hey, Gaara!", and continued walking towards him. I think I was so scared that my brain just shut down, honestly; my body carried through on some kind of autopilot, knowing that it had to survive.

The distance between us had been swallowed by my strides to a mere, few feet before something within the redhead startled to life. Gaara jumped as if I had shocked him with static electricity, and the only sign of existence the sand gave was a fiendish rattle, like the warning of a snake, as something skirted, tasted my ankle. _OH, SHIT._

"Woah, woah- calm down." I chatted to his unseeing, glazed gaze. "I'm on your side." He seemed to be madly staring through my leg, focusing on it as if he could salt my skin to taste by doing so. "Are Kankurou and Temari okay?" I drew him out, trying to compose my voice.

I couldn't show any fear; he could smell it, flowing through my veins with the hoarfrost that descends when the sun suddenly disappears. I was going to have to lie my way out of this…if I could…

* * *

**Because if preShippuuden!Gaara was about to eat you, what would be running through your head?**


	7. More Lies

**We're getting to the good part. I know that despite your faith in the story, you'd all secretly love for Kon to be put through a paper shredder.**

**Guess what? SHE WILL BE. This is probably going to be the only OC you've seen who... well, you'll have to wait and see. -grins-**

**

* * *

**

"Okay, it was rude of me to call you just plain 'Gaara'. I totally understand that." He still wasn't responding. Had I crashed his brain or something? "Gaara-san, I'm here to check on you and your-"

"I wouldn't say anymore, if you want to make it out of this goddamn forest," a gravelly voice assured me from high in the willow-shaded canopy.

Wind, coming. _Fan,_ my brain bit. A flash of canvas, dashed with purple moons like blank eyes, suddenly manifested behind me, it's broad, pine arms folding to reveal a tall young girl constituted of equal parts sulky and sultry. I had two words for Temari, the first time we met: ice, and woman.

"Seriously," she piped up, narrowing the turquoise eyes that her mother had given her. "He'll snap your neck if you keep babbling at him like that. He might still, depending on who the hell you are..."

"Oh, I'm Consuelo," was my dumb response. Brother and sister exchanged wondering looks, then simultaneously shot me a face that clearly said: and? _Time to think of something, Conchita!_

"Baki-sensei didn't tell you about me?" I begged, adopting a hurt tone. "And I thought I was so special, being especially asked by Orochimaru-sama to check up on you guys and all…"

"How do you know about Orochimaru! Who sent you!" Kankurou breathlessly snapped from his tree-top perch. I could hear Temari behind me sigh with exasperation.

"Relax, dipstick-" she snarled up at him. "She's _obviously_ one of us- nobody would have been brave enough to walk right up to Gaara, otherwise." Obviously. "Baki-sensei probably wanted to test us or something- if she did a poor job of tracking us, we'd have sensed her and killed her. That is _so _something he would come up with…"

Displeased silence; I noticed a distinct lack of birdsong in this area of the forest. How had I been stupid enough to not realize what even the animals sensed? "Anyway," came my best wheedling, Kabuto impression, "- my orders were simply to make sure Gaara's siblings were alright. Somehow Orochimaru-sama figured that Gaara didn't need checking-up on…"

"So you're a babysitter." the girl spat. The ire kindled in her invisible face, stinking of charcoal- and then I was on the ground on my palms and knees; Temari had kicked my legs out from under me, and placed her sandal square on the small of my back to hold me still. I didn't dare react (phh, like I really could), but instead fell subserviently.

"You tell that transvestite snake-bitch and his four-eyed cronie that the Kazekage's children don't need to be overseen. We've got our end of the deal upheld, unless the Sound has decided that they don't trust us after all…"

"You might as well kill me now, if you expect me to say that to his face," I smiled. Really, in the face of it, what was the worst thing they could do? I was in deep shit now- maybe death would be my only option. My confidence had absolutely dried up, but I had to hide this behind my traitor-grin…and I did.

With a shove of her foot, I rolled free of the triangle of siblings; Temari's hands were on her hips, Gaara's hanging listlessly by his side. He seemed to only be following the conversation to discover if he would indeed get to break my neck.

"Then I suppose you don't want me to escort you to the Tower? Alrighty, guys. We'll talk later. Oh." I added, trying to stroll on jelly knees. "Tell Gaara-san that I'm necessary to the mission, so it might not be in his best interest to break my neck just yet."

* * *

I took stock in the small room that abutted the unsealing room: a shiny, obsidian panel held up the pear-shaped space, the rule for the chalky white bricks. I could see myself in this shimmering stone, and I took a good look. It might have been my last, after all.

After surviving two days in the hostile forest, I looked like a kitten found in a storm drain; perhaps it would have been in our best interests for Lee to take me back out and finish the drowning job. But I'd come for a purpose, knowing full well that I was nowhere near Chuunin level.

If one more person made it to the Exams, then there was a chance that Gaara might be paired to fight another person- and on the one-in-a-million chance that it was me, I would do whatever it took to keep him from hurting Lee. I was deluded by love; staring into a knowing glass, I refused to see any other alternative or way around fate. I had to have some reason for being here.

I took the fact that Gaara was lounging hungrily near my blindspot as a challenge.

* * *

I should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. If you decide to screw with fate in the smallest way, it has a way of kicking you right back down. Until he was striding up onto the spectator's deck with his team, I hadn't even realized that Yakushi Kabuto had failed to drop out.

And we're not even going to talk about what Gai promised to do to me when all the teams were asked to retreat to the spectator scaffoldings; he didn't scold me, just assured me that the rest of my life would involve complete and utter misery, mainly involving branding and being held underwater. That said, he was glad that Kurenai would get her fifty ryou _and _the entire Jounin bet pot back.

My first indication that everything wasn't going to work out was when Akado and Sasuke were first called to brawl…just like in the series. Shishi Rendan was born; I watched Lee's wide little eyes peal with jealousy, and watched Sakura squint and act like she was incontinent or something. Geez. I might have been a fangirl, but at least I wasn't the obsessive stalker of some stupid-ass plagiarist… Sasuke was such a stupid-ass plagiarist, in fact, that I'm sure nobody blamed me for doing what I did: as the medics hopped up the steps to carry his writhing little worm-body to the medical bay, I had subtly moved closer to the stairs. Just as the white-clad extras mounted the landing, I stretched out my arm and yawned; my joints just couldn't help it. What I did was cuff Sasuke square in the face. "Oh, I'm sorry! My arm just kind of- you know- _swung_. Are you okay, Uchiha-san?" (You know you wanted to do it, too)

The matches persisted in their orderly order, exactly paired. Standing between Gai's leaden thigh and within range of the inviting plushness of Lee's (mercifully unharmed) neck, it became clearer and clearer to me that only one match could be mine- and just as Naruto came stomping up, all light and airy with victory over poor Kiba, my worst fear was realized. The scoreboard flashed: KON VS. YAKUSHI KABUTO, and blinked as if it were 'Loling' at my abject horror.

You will forgive if I say plainly that I could have shit myself with terror; I could have, but that certainly wasn't going to help keep me alive. I'd long been a fan of _Grey's Anatomy_, and Doctor Burke's best line of all was what I hung desperately on to: "_Screw the odds."_ If there was the smallest chance that I could survive, I had no choice but to take it…even if my stomach was trying to escape my body in preparation for 'Killin' Time'.

* * *

As I took my place across the arena from Kabuto, I cast one glance back up at the two, green-clad apparitions screaming for me from the protected platform. For them; for them, I was willing to face down the odds: for the chance to be with the people who had loved and encouraged me, in these times to come.

Granted, Kabuto was supposed to drop out to avoid suspicion- but I would find later that Orochimaru had noticed the odd number of participants and notified Kabuto last-minute that he was to fight in the Preliminaries. My own data-stat card was completely empty; Orochimaru wanted him to gather intel on every up and coming Konoha Genin, myself included. Poor devil…Orochimaru couldn't have known that I wasn't worth even _putting _on a card...

I could: barely hit a running target, suck water out of grass (THERE'S a skill), control a whip of water with the tensile strength of, say, yarn, and draw onto my hand a thin film of water from the air around me. Sounds like the match of the century, huh? But what Kabuto didn't know _was_ my secret weapon- and that's that I _had_ no real secret weapon! Convoluted, yes; miraculous, even more so.

I was ready, when Gekkou called time. From Lee I had learned that speed was an extremely versatile weapon, and the one thing I was was fast. The chakra-flow exercises with Gai had rendered me almost able to match the speed of Neji and Tenten, second-year Genin, without tiring out my already-fixed stamina. Running in the Forest had boned me up on adrenaline, but that could only last so long; I'd just have to hope that my luck held out. And isn't luck half of being a Shinobi, after all?

Kabuto's sweeping kick was forcibly hackneyed; he couldn't show too much strength, or risk revealing his true level of power. He would definitely stick to taijutsu, then. I dodged his kick, one that Lee had thrown me off my feet with, at full power, countless times. It was like skipping rope; I landed just as his heel swept past, and immediately kicked into the bend of his knee. The stress to the tendon was enough to at least make Kabuto flinch, even though there was virtually no power there; I think he might have even paused with _wonder_ at how weak the blow was. It was no problem for him to shift his weight, however, and deliver another unflinching kick that could have certainly leveled me.

I had no idea what to do- so I jumped backwards, snatching the foot that was about to turn my nose into pulp, and held on. When he jerked back, I went sailing along with it; scrambling like a frantic monkey, I hugged onto Kabuto's thigh and did something that even now I laugh at: I bit him, in about the spot where diabetics inject insulin into their hips.

His arm flailed behind, snatching at my ragged clothes. Having been in public day care for most of my kindergarten days, I at least knew how to bite well; I clamped down as I never had before, and his tugging only succeeded in scraping my teeth along his lower back. What I was doing was unprecedentedly primitive- I can only imagine what the Jounin above were thinking, let alone Kabuto, who was nigh upon their level at the tender age of eighteen.

Kabuto would use some secret potion to try and stop me, I knew, because an overt ninjutsu display could blow his cover; poison made the most sense, and of course a medic would have some. I knew that he would avoid Shizune's Poison Mist technique later in the series, meaning that his blood had no forced immunity; as long as I didn't meet his eyes, so he could utilize the technique he had on the Rain ninja, all I had to fear were poisoned kunai- which he promptly drew, at that moment. Drawing his lips against the pain, Kabuto savagely twisted his arm around in some impossible, contortionist draw and made to stab into my calf. All I could do was let go, which sent me tumbling onto the ground on my head; Kabuto whirled around and threw his weight to stab, but one awkward leap sent me flying straight between his thick legs. I somersaulted past him while he, to avoid stepping on me, tripped and very nearly fell onto the ground with me. When he gained his footing, though, there was nothing but killing intent in his crouched, panther form. Kunai hungry for flesh to rip, he bounded straight at me.

SHMACK! The knife connected with the cold, chrome sheen of my hitate-ate. I had purposely tied it loose, and now, holding one end, I could use it as a quasi-defense weapon (I didn't dare try my luck with a hand-to-hand kunai battle). Kabuto threw up a hand and snatched the plate when I attempted to bitch-slap his flushed cheek with it again; his grip was for naught, though. As soon as his fingers clamped on the headband, I released the cloth and locked my fingers over his own, which encircled the kunai knife. I was literally hanging from his wrist, my feet off the ground. When the next hand sought another knife, I dropped and breathlessly zipped behind him once more. Kabuto had to twirl to follow me, now armed with poison-bleeding knives in either hand. He would anticipate me going between his knees again, throwing down one of the knives between his feet as he whirled; if I had made that move, I would have been stabbed through just from the force with which he threw it. A burst of that Water-chakra, however, blasted me high over Kabuto's head. I tumbled on empty air, aiming to kick straight down on his head. Of course he threw the remaining kunai straight for me, and this was the miracle I can't account for: the point of the knife struck the rubber bottom of my sandal _exactly vertical_, displaying Kabuto's prowess of aim but also completely avoiding my tender little tootsies. I flipped, snatched at the knife to avoid landing on it; I could see the shuriken glittering between the stalks of his gloved fingers. All I could do was-

The shuriken thudded into my flesh with the dull song of steel conquering this weak realm. Only one point sticks you, so the pain from shuriken is immediate: deep, like an inch-wide thorn shot, straight _shot_ into your flesh, and carrying the full weight of the other three, tumbling points. The arch of my arm had at least protected my eyes- I had brushed the stinging edges of the flying weapons, slightly diverting their paths. I could feel an icicle stuck in the numb flesh of my cheek; blood already drawling into the curve of my collar bone, and a star stuck in each shoulder; the stars were buried by two points in my abdomen. But I could also feel the emptiness of my palm- the hand I usually favored. I could feel the vibrations of the kunai knife, which had stayed true to its mark (its target had been _holding still_, focused on raining shuriken upon me-).

Kabuto had not expected me to be ambidextrous.

He had no choice but to stop- to receive the antidote from his shuriken pouch and uncap the battle-ready syringe; a true Tokubetsu ninja, he had even planned for being stabbed by his own poisoned weapons. But- and this part I swear to God was luck- when he stepped backwards to get away from me, he completely forgot about the knife he had thrown, still stuck up to its handle in the arena floor. The loop of his pant-leg wrapped on the circular handle-tip, and- it being stuck so steadfastly into the ground- Kabuto lost the precious instant he needed to inject himself before the poison took effect (I had no idea how swiftly it would work- I was bullshitting this whole routine, mind you, trying my best to anticipate his prehensile mind-). The mighty traitor of my village felt his limbs turn into spaghetti from his own elixir; his eyes unfocused, and Kabuto could only twist as he fell to prevent the knife from penetrating deeper. I had barely penetrated the skin of his abdomen- but the best medical-ninja known to our generation could _surely_ devise a toxin that would disassemble an opponent from the merest scratch.

For my victory, I'll tell you that I didn't get applause. The Third Hokage had dropped the pipe from between his teeth, dumbstruck; Gai and Kakashi, side by side, couldn't have looked more different and yet their slack jaws conveyed the same look they'd held when Naruto won his match with a _fart_. Never before had the Daimyo in attendance or the Jounin of the various countries been so insulted by having to watch such an unimpressive, uncoordinated battle; Naruto's fart now seemed wholly _honorable_. I'd won, but my lack of talent had been glaring; I'd used no ninjutsu; barely scratched my enemy; and was bleeding from head to toe, with shuriken still sticking out of my flesh.

The medics hustled out as soon as it became apparent that Kabuto couldn't rise on his own; they dithered around, making observations about what kind of powerful neurotoxin Kabuto could have used, until Kabuto's enraged snorts finally indicated to them that perhaps they should simply inject him with the antidote lying two feet from his fingers. He leapt up seconds later, massaging the tooth imprints on his lower back and glaring sheer death at me.

I couldn't even catch my breath, or gather the strength to pull his shuriken out; I was shaking visibly, shuddering as if in a convulsion. The arena swam; I had won. I won.

And that Lee…god bless him… I heard a single pair of clapping hands ring out once, twice, statacco, and then his cheer. I turned around to catch, over my shoulder, the green-clad boy applauding my futile, phyrric victory. Too dumb to know any better, Naruto raised a fist and rallied Lee's cry. I'd made it halfway across the arena before the medics caught me and began dragging me off to daub my wounds with paint-thinner-smelling stuff. This place; I wanted to stay here forever with them, on the side of winners and up-and-coming heroes, survivors.

Unfortunately, it was at that moment I remembered that one of the boys I loved most at that moment was about to travel to opposite shore.

* * *

**Click for the maiming of the OC, plz. -**


	8. A Pound of Flesh

**IT'S FINALLY TIME...TO MAIM THE OC! -blows on pocket-sized trumpet- **

**Seriously. You do not know how fun it was to write this chapter, or Kon's response and how it defines her. She's amazing, I'll give her that.**

**... But I still take pleasure in harming her. Heehee.**

* * *

"_Shut your face!" had been her favorite saying; my name, when she was angry but not read to murder me, was "Little Shit". I grew up swearing, and I was letting a whole torrent of them loose as I sat clamped to the fuzzy top of the toilet seat: I'd had a sticker-burr stuck in my foot for the entire day, and was on the verge of hysterics each time my mother approached with the tweezers to remove it._

"_Oye, little shit!" she shrieked back, matching my five year-old wails. "Just shut your face! You wanna talk about pain? You think you're so special, you don't have to ever be in it? Just shut up! Shut up!" _

_She knew enough about the science of pain herself. If only I had realized..._

_

* * *

_

"You're gonna be fine," was the only thing the nice medic-lady said to me; the others had clustered around Kiba and the silent forms of dead competitors, and were giggling in a far-off dialect about, I supposed, my match. The woman, calm, bespectacled and aged, with ginger hair poking out from under her uniform hat, sat me up as if I were a child and helped me put my shirt back on. Embarassingly enough, my nipple had nearly been severed by one of the shuriken; a bit of healing chakra had reattached it, but she'd said I was looking at decreased sensitivity in it (she then added that this was a boon when breastfeeding, and giggled a sadistic, old lady chuckle that would make Chiyo sound benign). Looking for mindsoap distracted me from the immediate knowledge of Lee's impending doom for a few moments… I was free to return and watch the Exams, which I did, trying desperately to keep from scratching my wounds to death (they itch as much as stitches, mind you).

Hinata was drawing up a strong stance; there's no way I could have survived against Neji, someone who had come to display his full tapestry of strengths. She would fall by an enemy ten times stronger and more bitter than one handicapped Kabuto, and the bravery resplendent in her thin arms as she draped forth the diadem of her family crest was, in short, one of the most humbling things I had ever seen. All I could hope was that Naruto would grow up enough to be worthy of her, someday.

My face burned with shame, for the first time; what did one victory mean, any way, if I couldn't be as brave as even the shyest kunoichi?

I couldn't move, watching her evade and do the goddamn best she could, watched her be mowed down by a mantis of hatred, who had scorned me and debased the person I loved the most to his face. Neji was a pale ghost of the Hyuuga's tipped-scale past, and this was how things had to work out; Neji had to prove himself, just as Hinata and Naruto and every person here would have to. With every mistake, we must surely be learning; every trauma and hurt, every ache we endured was surely for the eventual accummulation of our character- and I knew just what kind of souls these children would grow up to have. They would be heroes, masters of their own fates.

But even knowing this, it was difficult to watch what Hinata and Lee went through, that day.

* * *

Time passes.

* * *

I woke up on the concrete steps of a building that I had walked past every morning on my way to training; it was a closed-off building façade that hid the entrance to the Chuunin Exam Preliminary Arena. That was some city-planning department; nobody would have guessed in a million years, least of all me.

I bolted up, and swooned just as Gai gently brushed my temple against a bean-filled hospital pillow. He'd taken me out into the fresh night air; the sky was suddenly mauve, and there was a cavern of time that I couldn't account for, I realized. Gai was seated on the step beside me, his mighty legs coiled and trembling like springs bent against their will. I thought the pain in my head was making the world shake so, but it turned out to be just his leg. The horizon, burnished indigo, was completely, utterly the only solid thing in the universe. I reached over to clutch at the fold of his legwarmer, and didn't notice that my right arm didn't move because I was too busy noticing that my huge, hulking brute of a Green Beast sensei was weeping his heart out, face cupped between his big, flat hands.

"Sensei-" I asked; my throat was so dry, I sounded like some sort of under-the-bed-monster. Lee; the last thing I remembered was his match beginning- Gaara looming, the waves of sand pounding and scraping his green body, tossing him like a sea of wicked intention and Gaara's _eyes_, the lye shine in them as he licked his lips-

"Sensei! Sensei- Lee, where's Lee!" my voice cracked.

Gai had been staring at me, his eyes still brimming, since I first spoke; he seemed shell-shocked. Oh, god- what could have happened to Lee to make Gai cry like this? What had happened while I was asleep? How long had that been, and why-

"He's fine, sweetheart." He said, much too gently. "He's going to be okay. His leg and arm are badly hurt, but… he's…"

"Can he be a ninja ever again!" I blurted out, trying to lean over. He stopped me, caught my thin shoulder. Why was I so light?

"He'll be okay, sweetheart, but we need to worry about you right now, okay?"

"WHERE IS HE, SENSEI? _WHAT THE FUCK IS-" _And it was then that I realized:

Gai wasn't crying about just Lee. He was crying about me too, because I no longer had a right arm from the elbow down. I was looking down at where my hand should have been stabilizing my body, against the rough stone step, and only Gai was holding me up.

My arm was entirely gone. I could only stare, only hear half of what he said.

"Oh, Kon-chan… Your heart was in the right place, honey… Lee's okay now, there's nothing else for you to do, so you just rest now… Let's go back inside the hospital, I had them put you two in the same room for the first few days…"

* * *

I couldn't leave well enough alone.

I had been a screaming wreck; Gai had had to drag me out into the hall, where the sound of Lee's body ricocheting off of the walls only echoed and stabbed deeper. He couldn't calm me down, said something that I couldn't hear as Ura Renge rent the halls and Lee shot into heaven faster than the eye could follow. He was living his dreams in there; he was giving his all to lose everything, and I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't even hold it together for him as his limbs and his will to live were being obliterated-

His limbs. Oh, god, Gai had to jump down and save him- Gai had to save him from the final blow!-

I tore from Sensei, shouting as I ran; it couldn't be too late, I couldn't have killed- Lee, no, not him, not the boy who had drowned me and saved me, the one who had clapped, who had made this semi-life worth it… I couldn't have stolen Gai in the one moment that he needed him most.

Gai never would have made it; I wasn't thinking, and if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have thought again. I skipped up onto the railing and flew out into the openness of the arena, aiming for the shattered sand visage of the demon of Sunagakure. He was lying there, so pathetic and despicable, so _entitled-_

Gaara diverted the attack at the last second, sending the wave of sand to swallow me instead. I was Sabaku Kyuued; Sand Burial-ed. Lee lost the match, and I cemented it by leaping in to save him, just as Gai was supposed to have. My arm was so crushed, they'd had no choice- the sand in it would lead to infection, gangrene- they had to amputate it.

I would have taken a bullet for Lee; instead, all I had to give up was my writing hand...

* * *

**BOOM! TAKE _THAT_, MARY SUES EVERYWHERE!**


	9. Now You've Done It

**AN: Yes, a Kon update... Sorry that I didn't read my lovely reviews sooner, dearies- I was just so busy applying to schools and GETTING ACCEPTED TO MY SECOND CHOICE, EEK.**

**I've let all of these fics stagnate...but I shall reward your patience with two chapters, for both _Con _and _Changes._ Forgive me? **

**"Where Do I Go From Here?" (c) Pocahontas 2, Disney**

* * *

"_The birds move on, so they survive…_

_They do what they must for now and trust in their plan_

_If I trust in mine, somehow I just might find_

_Who I am-_

_But where do I go from here?..."_

_

* * *

_

I couldn't look at Lee for the first few days. Never mind that he didn't wake up- couldn't, even if he wanted to. His brain was bruised, mulching itself against the inside of his skull as it struggled to find somewhere to relieve the intense concussions he'd received. Gaara had knocked him silly- which gave me a few precious days to try and anticipate what he would say, if he remembered what had happened.

He woke up one Thursday; Gai was there, and I wasn't. I had been discharged, and was standing there in a daze, trying to remember how to function. (They couldn't fix the phantom pains or the fear in my stomach) I was a girl with one defunct nipple and only one hand; half Latina and half lost. Mostly lost.

Lee remembered nothing. I made Gai promise not to say anything about it. We told him that I'd been in an accident while out training; we told him not to worry about it, that he still had two arms and even if one was broken, pish- there were all kinds of ways to fight without one hand.

I hoped for my sake that there were. Lee's recovery was promised; mine was as fictional and meaningless as I was in this place.

… Losing my arm was hard.

* * *

They gave us a month to prepare, to train up a new strength to replace the ones we'd lost in the Preliminaries.

I couldn't have beaten Shikamaru if I'd had eight limbs; beating (if that was the word for it) Kabuto was nothing short of… I didn't know. I didn't know much of anything, especially how to proceed.

How was I supposed to protect anyone with one gimpy arm?

Gaara's drama would soon begin to unfold; I'd had sympathy for him in my old life (who wouldn't?), but it might be understatement to say that I was considerably depressed at this point. Gai had enough to do, encouraging Lee; I wanted nothing to do with either of them in my despair. Even _el ciello_ had deserted me, it seemed; the days were dark, cloudy, grim. I didn't regret what I'd done… but it sure sucked to be me. That's what I was thinking on the night I climbed up to the roof of the Chinese restaurant.

You've probably seen the place as a backdrop in the anime. It's a beautiful building, all lacquered up and made to look like something beautiful and ancient. The tiles are authentic, but the wood is not; it's cheap, glazed, a specter of real ebony. Something in that just bled symbolism to me.

I had no choice but to learn to function with my missing arm. It was how it dragged behind me, like a useless half-wing, that made me not even want to get up in the mornings. I felt goofy and vulnerable; and so I climbed up onto the roof of the building to prove to myself that I could. Tomorrow, I would drop out of the Chuunin Exam. Tomorrow was another day.

Tomorrow was not promised to me.

I covered my face with my arm, blocking the moonlight for a sliver of a moment; when I withdrew it, _he_ was there.

You could only possess that kind of silence if _you_ were possessed as well. Gaara owned the sands, the riddles of the desert wind; he spoke the tongue of demons and despair, the language of the sleepless night. He could compress his existence to a whisper, or crunch his heart into the singularity at the center of a black hole, so small as to be unbreathing, _undetectable_. He could sneak up and kill anybody.

But he wasn't; he simply stood, with the distance kept by an animal examining a new object, looking down at me. I must have been a sight: unbrushed spray of hair, dirty sweatpants, the stub of my arm shining with clean, obnoxious-white bandage.

"Get out of here," the sands suddenly growled.

"Too bad. I was here first."

Again, a bravery born of absolute terror. This kid had ripped my arm off, but I couldn't summon the anger required to avenge Lee's injuries or my own trauma. I couldn't even get angry, lying there on the roof; I felt dead, my limbs all wooden but one that ached so much that my mouth was dry.

I got the feeling that Gaara didn't hear the word 'no' very often; he continued to look down on me, but with a faint glaze of stun.

"… Don't make me kill you-" he began.

"Oh, _bite my ass!" _I shouted, hauling my amputated upper body up so quickly that my visitor could only squinch back as a reflex. "Go ahead and kill me, you masquera-wearing _cabrone_! It'd be downright charitable of you!"

I didn't care, at that moment, if Gaara dashed me to pieces, combusted me with sand, or flung me into the courtyard below. There's no way that Lee would look twice at a girl who couldn't hold her own in battle, and I wouldn't be Gai's student anymore. After all of my promises to the Hokage, the potential benefit I had held was zilch: I could be thrown out of the village, evicted and disowned. All of this sounded much worse than death.

"If it keeps you from eating babies, go right-on-fucking-ahead!" I couldn't stop; months of rage and fear were finally boiling over, in front of probably the worst person in the world; and knowing that just made me cry harder. "Maybe I'll go back to being an Honors student who can barely run a ten-minute mile, instead of the biggest fuck-up of a Shinobi known to mankind! I have the collective skill and societal worth of a cheeseball quishe, all of my teenaged fantasies about bearing Rock Lee's children are shot to hell because now I don't even have an arm to _hold_ them with- or a nipple! He almost cut my tit off! Do you have any idea what that _feels like! _Oh_, _sure, Rock Lee'll wanna hit that!_"_

Gasping laughter, tinged with saltwater; my face stung. "Like he would have hit it even before," came this gravelly, sardonic being that had been nursed to fruition. "- because I was still a failure then, and now I have a gimpy _stub_ to remind me of it every day! AND NOW YOU WANT TO KICK ME OFF A ROOF. _Well fine! FUCKING FIIIINEEEEE! KILL MY SORRY ASS AND END THIS, I DON'T CAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRREEEE!" _

There is a way that girls can scream, only when they're at the end of their mind; I had never heard a voice like mine, and even as my shrill hell-howl screeched over the rooftops of Konohagakure, bounding like some unleashed beast of caged hatred, I could barely believe it. It must have been like seeing a nine-tailed demon fox.

Silent night, unholy night; dogs barked from the Inuzuka compound at the echo-specter of my cry. I screamed again, dashing my lungs bloody-murder against the chill again- and when that was spent I crumpled back onto the rooftop, spread-eagle beneath an apathetic sky; I tried to smash my head on the tilework as hard as I could, even as tears chapped my cheeks and stung me with my own life. Why couldn't I just die!

"I'd rather die… I'd rather just fucking die…" I whimpered, hands clawing at my face.

Gaara had been at point-blank range to my rant the entire time; I'd leaned toward him, crazed with my own useless fury as I begged him to kill me the first time. God, I belonged in the looney bin even more than he did- the poor kid couldn't understand one iota of emotion, and yet here I was shouting at him like he was some sort of homicidal psychiatrist. I didn't blame him for just standing there, dumbstruck; but no matter how I clawed at my tears, he still remained.

"You gonna kill me, or what?" I finally snarled at him.

The sand roiled up my body in a thick, salt torrent; I could taste it's chauvinistic, bragging power, the dark, soiled secrets that Gaara carried on his back. I wasn't afraid; I could barely see, and that was how I wanted it. I couldn't stop crying, even as my feet left the rooftop.

"It seems I'm not the only one who believes in thinning the herd," sounded the skanking voice of Dosu.

Gaara whirled around to face the Quasimodo-shape of the Sound Shinobi; I dipped in the sky, the victim of the Jinchuuriki's manic attention span. Of course, Dosu had come to be massacred, just like in the manga. I hadn't imagined that this could be the night-

"Be a good Tanuki-demon and keep quiet while I finish you off- and the girl too, since she seems to want it so badly."

"And _you_- you are the biggest _idiot _known to man!" I called; Gaara's head whipped back as if he were watching a pingpong match. Dosu's single eye read confusion. "He turned my teammate into tomato soup, and you _really_ think you're gonna defeat Gaara? Jesus _Christ, _you aren't worth your animator's salary. Gaara, kill that numb-nuts first so I can at least die in the company of another loser... Better yet, let _me_ get him. Even _I _could take him."

Gaara's gaze bounded back to Dosu, who was already frothing with a reply.

"Y-you stupid bitch! Who the hell do you think you are!"

"_YO MAMA," _I snapped, beyond lucidity. "I'm a woman at the end of my rope- I've got a bipolar schitzo levitating me in midair, my nipple fell off, and I can walk on ceilings. I'm _done_. _DONE."_

"_Why you-"_

"I'm not schitzo," Gaara calmly, suddenly remarked. Dosu dropped his stance.

For a moment the world hung, unloving, with this red-haired boy at it's center. "I'm an unloved sack of sand drained completely of emotion by Daddy issues.. . Everyone I've even remotely liked has tried to kill me. I've got guilt coming out of my ears, my brain is held together with tape because I haven't slept in fourteen years, and I fantasize about my sister _because she's the only girl who hasn't thrown rocks at me!_ Don't call me a schitzo!" he snarled at me. "You don't know the _beginning_ of wanting to die! And you- get the _hell_ off my roof!"

"I don't know what you two are doing here, but I came here to get ahead!" the Sound-nin roared in reply; with that, he charged blindly at Gaara, that wonky amplifier sewn by dark charka to his very bones leading the way.

I managed to catch myself as Gaara's sand abandoned me, in midair. If the sand had been light, Dosu would have been carbonized, a dark shadow on that wandering field of glass; nothing remained of him, the claws of sand having swallowed all of his meager existence but a few paltry drops of blood, which Gaara's demonic familiar hovered over, alien, to slurp up in the new wake of Dosu's complete absence.

We the living stood ten feet apart on that indigo eve, each of us struggling with demons of our own. I will never forget Gaara's soulless eyes, the equal help and homicide battling eternally in them.

"My mother says you're annoying," he deadpanned. "She says killing you would be a waste of effort. One day… I will kill you, all of you… You will sate my purpose and disappear forever…"

"You're gonna come out of this." was my only reply. "I'm not. _Now _who doesn't know the beginning of pain and uncertainty?" Suddenly exhausted, I whirled on my heel and walked away from his imposing, black form.

"… Come back," he called plaintively.

* * *

Someone hit pause on the universe: did Gaara just… ask for my presence? Oh, god- every fangirl wants to save him from misery, but what would that do to the plot? How could I refuse him, if he-

"… My father the Kazekage wants to speak with you about what you told us. There's no record of your alliance to the Sound village anywhere. "

Well, so much for that…

This was precisely what I hadn't wanted to happen. My secret was out, and there was no telling who knew, now. Orochimaru certainly; I wouldn't put it past him to do some research after my abysmal "defeat" of his favorite sidekick, but in the madness of the recent weeks…I'd kind of hoped that he'd forgotten.

Big mistake. **Huge**.

Nothing seemed to spark on Baki's face when I approached his tall, curtained form at the location which Gaara proceeded to lead me to. "Does he know?-" I whispered shrilly, trying to look like I wasn't sweating my brains out of my skin with fear.

"He's my father's most trusted aid," the redhead replied, in his usual monotone. Oh, _joy._

The traditional gloom that swallows a hollow, traditional home during the night was cloying as we came up a treacherously-steep set of stairs. Why were there no lights on or candles? Just to scare me? It was working!

We entered a plain sitting room, vivisectioned in the center by a green mesh curtain; behind the mosquito netting I could make out the forms of a few steadfast viziers, and the straight-backed curve of a brawny shoulder silhouetted by moonlight. It had to be close to two in the morning, by now, and yet the Kazekage received me with a lazy gesture that suggested he had all the time in the world.

Baki plunked me down; I dropped dumbly, and was then kicked into a bow by the crumugeonous old Jounin. I was too freaked out to even remember formalities. That feeling only magnified when the broad, seated form dismissed all observers and guards from the room. Gaara, Baki, and the rest of the aids scampered away into the clamshell-dark. The room was still entirely dark. A fear tactic, of course.

"My dear," came a scaly voice, it's coldness stark and detached. "You cannot be so foolish as to believe that you have pulled anything over us. Your best option is to be completely honest. We know everything."

"Which everything would that happen to be?" I asked blankly. I'd read _Death Note_ enough times to know that evasion was a vital skill, and Orwell's _1984_: confessions made in the throes of pain aren't what interrogators are looking for. There was no way I could stop Orochimaru from draining my memories to discover all that I knew, but I removed the thought from my mind; it was an awfully big leap to assume the weight of my knowledge of the future from this one incidence. They would probably just kill me for knowing about the Suna-Oto alliance, and never suspect otherwise if I didn't give any indication.

Now I just had to manage to get killed... Sounded easy.

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**Welcome, Possible Pairing 2 of 3: Gaara/Kon!- if she lives long enough. Stay tuned!**


	10. The Bullshitting Olympics

**AN: Okay, THIRD time uploading this... Blah blah blah, Kon's in deep sh*t now. Review. Rawr.**

* * *

"And just how many 'everythings' are there?" the dark shape spat back at me.

"As many as there are grains of sand in the desert, Lord Kazekage." I shot back. "As the greatest son of the desert, I'm sure you have their count…"

"My child,"

Something was creeping across the floor, fat and full of blood and breath and venom; their tongues hissed on open air, tasting, searching for my heat in the perpetual darkness which snakes live all of their days. Their eyesight is no good, you see. They search with their tongues, see with their mouthes-

His voice was as quiet as the dainty scrape of their exquisite scales across the bamboo-mat floor. "How quickly you die depends on how much you decide to reveal to us."

I swallowed the wretch waiting at the base of my stomach; I couldn't imagine what showing fear to Orochimaru would imply. I knew better than to think that I could lie to him…

Wait. Itachi would banish him, and Sasuke would kill his current body; Kabuto would soak up his evil essence, but deep down Orochimaru was just one more orphan of hatred. He'd had several lifetimes to gather both knowledge and hatred, but his own pride would indefinitely do him in. It's happened enough in my old world. I couldn't reveal, however, that I knew his real name- but I also couldn't be too forthright in my insistence that he was the Kazekage, or he would get suspicious… wouldn't he?

"No true kunoichi begs for their life, you will find." I growled in reply. The snakes were circling my heels now, nibbling my ankles with their papery feeler-tongues. My gut seized with terror at the kindling sensation. Would I be so brave if they began to eat me alive?

"You told the Sunagakure Siblings that you knew of the alliance between the Sound and Sand villages, point blank," came the blank voice, cutting through my opposition like a knife. "You mentioned one key leader of the movement by name- Orochimaru. Even the aids outside do not know his name. How did you get ahold of this information?"

_One key leader_- he was trying to mislead me by implicating some larger organization. He'd made up a pissing contest, to frighten me and anyone listening. He wanted me to bite.

"A child of your rank could by no means hold such an important position in a resistance movement- and yet your performance at the Chuunin Preliminaries indicates that you possess a great amount of power, which you choose to mask very…creatively." I could hear the slap of a manila folder hitting the ground; at its cry the snakes' long bodies started. " Miss… Kon-san, you are clearly a 'kunoichi' of some importance. Maybe you truly are not strong, but your subversivity lends you well to the infiltration of this bi-country alliance. How long has Konoha been anticipating our movements?"

"They aren't. The Hokage, the Black Ops, name a Konoha force- I've told no one."

"This is correlated by the brain-draining techniques which we performed on a few high-ranking Shinobi," Orochimaru acknowledged, still in steel. "You must be in a private entreaty with the Hokage, then… But your appearance is quite startling. There are no records anywhere in the village of your existence, or the Sound Country's vast acquaintance. You appear to be a ghost, Miss Kon."

You have _no _idea how hard it was not to outright snort at that. I kept deathly quiet, nothing to go on. Orochimaru was a great planner and guesser; my only hope now was to trap him in one of his own suppositions…if that were possible.

"The Hokage knows nothing of your secret treaty." That much was the truth. "Perhaps you are familiar, Lord Kazekage, with the occult arts?"

"Explain yourself."

"My heritage is a secret I do prefer to keep…but if they had questioned the person who knows me best, your aids might have discovered that I am in possession of a rare talent: I'm a fortune teller, a gypsy of sorts." _This had better work…_

The snakes were now flush with my ankles, gripping tightly with their dry might at the single gesture of the Kazekage's hand. Why would Orochimaru use his snakes, if he suspected that I knew less than I was revealing? It was a private signal between us- or was it? One assumption, and it was all over…I couldn't read him to save my life…

"You mean to tell me that some child's art has enabled you to read into country alliances? Perhaps you need an example of how slowly we can kill you…"

"That won't be necessary. What phase is the moon in, Lord Kazekage?"

A pause. I was tipping him off balance. His thick neck swished, and I caught sight of the silhouette of Gaara's father's flesh, animated by the unholy will of this snake monster. "The moon is full," he announced suspiciously.

"Perfect. I can give a display of my abilities to confirm this…and potentially more. Have one of your aids bring a pack of Tarot cards, if they can find some at this hour. Maybe the Kazekage's daughter has a pair. I promise, it'll be worth the wait."

"I certainly hope so… for your sake, my dear."

In the bull-shitting Olympics: Kon, one, Orochimaru, zero.

* * *

"You foretold the truth, in that regard," I was informed after the silent assistant had delivered to the Kazekage a cloth-bound bundle of cards. Good thing they had them in the Naruto world...

I had never held a Tarot card before in my life; I'd had my future read at a sleepover once, and had found the predictions to be entirely false (the blonde girl 'reading' me had said I would have an ordinary life, and that I would live to a ripe old age. Phh.) I hoped my ignorance would appear novel instead of foolish. With a careful gesture I splayed the deck out in a fan-shape before me; the room was still so dark that I could barely see, but the snakes had retreated for my show.

"Please state the name of the person who's future you would like to forsee. I can also tell events from the past and usually predict major events, if you would like." I tried to say calmly.

"Show me the death of Sarutobi Hiruzen," Orochimaru immediately snarled.

This was just like the scene from _The Man Who Would Be King_, where Peachy and Daniel travel with the hostile Muslims by pretending to be airy mystics; this irony was not lost on me. I instructed 'Kazekage-sama' to chant the name of his desired object…which took some convincing, but he eventually began mumbling his teacher's real name as requested. I deftly flipped cards one after the other, folding and shuffling with my best Poker face. After a showy flip of hand, I drew the first card off of the top and stared for a moment.

"It's really freaking dark in here, you know?"

The Kazekage's hand lit upon an oil lamp I hadn't even seen; instantly a wallfull of others leapt to life, through what I guessed to be some type of Fire-type jutsu. Returning to my card, I realized that it was upside-down. I quickly flipped it.

"Why did you do that?"

"What?" I asked non-chalantly.

"Why did you read the card upside-down?" the man barked. I could now make out where the snakes had gone, in the soft light. They were folded like an altar scene behind Orochimaru's crouched form, their olive skin shimmering.

"To make sure that I didn't miss a true meaning," I replied cheerfully (this was exactly what the blonde girl had told me when I'd asked her the same thing). I had drawn, naturally, the Death card. I touched my forehead furitively, as though I were receiving a message from beyond. "Now, I can't find usually find just one event like death, I should let you know; it's the luck of the deck, but… ah, yes. I see him in the stomach of a beast. The monkey there could have eaten him… but there are some old guys who look kind of like him too, a wall of wood and water... Everything's kind of purple."

Well, there was no way I could have known all of Orochimaru's plan, even if Sarutobi had told me about his proficiency with Edo Tensei- I'd "predicted" the barrier technique which the Sound Four would employ, the resurrection of the Ni- and Shodaime Hokages plus Sarutobi's familial connection to them, Sarutobi's summon, Monkey King Enma… The others were explainable, but how could I have known about the Sound Four, or which of the four Hokages he would choose?

"Show me the death of Uchiha Itachi," Orochimaru growled.

Reshuffling, the murmur of the lost Uchiha's name; Sasuke himself wouldn't know the truth for five years. The Young Lovers card. "That child, there…" I murmured blearily, eyes shut tightly.

"What child!"

"Black hair, kind of like a duck's ass… He's firing lightning, channeling it down from the sky as if he owned it, and the sorrow- it's swallowing up the form of this other young man with long, dark hair... which one is Uchiha Itachi, sir?"

"Show me the death of Aramaki and Nagako Shirohebi," he snarled finally.

Ouch. How was I supposed to know who they were? Wait- I was sure I'd heard one of those words as one of the many I'd had to learn just to become minimally literate in Japanese writing… Which one was it for? Could there be a clue in their names?

"… Ah. Your parents."

I could hear him startle before even the light had traveled to my side of the room; Orochimaru's parents had been killed in one of the many Great Shinobi Wars, I remembered from somewhere. All of the names he'd been asking after had been of people he had known personally- Sarutobi was his teacher, Itachi his first choice for a vessel- It was a spot-on guess, and one that could have meant my end- if I hadn't been such a good student.

"Shiro" meant 'white', and "hebi" 'snake'- the inspiration for the man before me's evil true form. That's where he'd gotten it from: he could have picked an elephant or a platypus- but it had to be a white snake, for its symbolism and meaning to him.

"They died…horribly. I see horror, rage. There's ruins everywhere; a torrent of absolute destruction… there's little boy surrounded by fire… I think he might be trying to…"

That did it. The snakes struck out, snatching my arm as it placed one more frighteningly-illustrated card onto the mats. The robes of the Suna Shadow had rolled back to reveal white forearms, silken with everlasting youth- the arms of a man who could never die…or so he thought.

"There's no possible way that you could see that!-" he shouted shrilly, but as lost as if he were standing in the center of a tornado. "Even Sarutobi- I never told him- I was the only survivor of my clan!"

I trembled within the tightening grasp of the snakes; I'd hit the only raw nerve that this evil, evil man possessed. Shit, I was lucky!

"And yet I see," was my response. I dropped the card, allowing it to waft back to the ground with the whisper a life makes as it is extinguished. It was the only sound in the room, for some time.

"What were the chances of forseeing three deaths in a row, in that fashion?" he finally asked; I couldn't see the Kazekage's face any longer.

"My skill is directly related to the will of the person who is requesting the reading. I'd expect nothing less of a Kage. Someone with a will as strong as yours indeed asked me of the intentions of his country, and I saw Konoha's downfall at the Sound and Sand's hand." Lies, but effective ones. "I can't name names, of course...but this Shinobi is now dead."

The silence reigned supreme for some time; when I heard the cackle roil to his lips, I cut Konoha's greatest threat off, before he could look up at me and throw a reply.

"You won't kill such a valuable asset, would you? But there's a catch, sir… the people who's wills I read are inevitably cursed. How so? I've seen enough of my friends die, after an innocent reading during the early days of discovering this talent…"

More silence, less of a chance of success. How much superstition could I count on him possessing?

"After the reading, I must disappear forever from that person…for to see me again is the promise of a gruesome, immediate death. Like a doppelganger… are you familiar with dopplegangers, sir?"

Shifting; white skin, unspeakable ivory.

" I could be lying. All it would take to see if I was would be to look up, right now... Sir, I ask only to be left alone. I revealed my knowledge to the Sand Siblings just as a boon of the moment, to escape from Gaara in the Forest of Death. I would be no match against him, as you surely know. I'm just trying to make a life for myself, here- I read your countryman's fortune because he offered me a lot of money, and I haven't revealed my talent to Konoha just because of the curse I mentioned. I love this village, and for that reason I won't endanger them by cursing any member of it. I have told no one your secret, and I will never tell another soul, just to wrap them up in this sordid blight of mine."

Quiet. More quiet. So quiet in the snake's grasp, like impenetrable forks-

"If I am ever an enemy of the Sand, it will be on a battlefield alone. No celestial tricks. I won't approach you, if you won't approach me."

"Get out," he whispered, the moment shattering.

"… Thank you, sir," I mumbled. A bow; backing out of the room, the snakes slothing back to their unholy master as he sat in the middle of the oil-lit space, refusing to look up at my accursed person.

* * *

"Huuuhh… Psycho-Bitch? What are you doing here at this hour!"

"Thank you, sir" was all I could manage. "Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir… Oh my god, Naruto…Naruto, I'm scared… _I'm so scared_! _OH GOD!"_

"Woah, woah, what the hell! Kon-chan! Here, come inside with me… God only knows what you've been doing out there." Softer, now, as he stepped out of the door to catch my single arm: "There's nothing to be afraid of, Psycho-Bitch. I'm here…"

Gaara had been my chaperone; he would wait outside of the window all night, lest I tried to escape and inform the Hokage of my 'meeting' with the Kazekage. Orochimaru was there, real- he had held me in his clutches and I had barely escaped. He'd let me live, uncertain of how he could use me- for that was what Orochimaru did. No more. I couldn't live this way anymore.

I fell against Naruto's chest, not caring about anything but his proximity; as I sobbed into his chest, I apologized again and again for coming. He thought I meant this late-night trip, and told me I was fine; I was talking about my arrival in this universe.


End file.
